Tag Archives: Excel

June 16, 2025 · 17:52

A Shakespeare saying

That is on the table and it started 3 days when I wrote ‘The changing of games’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2025/06/13/the-changing-of-games/) Here I showed the setting that Microsoft opened itself to and Denmark is not the only one. There is a larger setting that America is no longer the go-to guy for European business. It is not a setting President Trump was looking for, but then he never anticipated that Microsoft would back a solution (builder.ai) with at the core a stated 700 engineers. Trust me, it matters (trusting me is always up in the air). You see, Europe and other places are now suddenly reminded how Microsoft got to the top and innovation is not the first ‘setting’ that comes to mind. Netscape and the Wordperfect corporation comes to mind in the first instance. You see, I never got to the top of anything. In part because I never heralded the limelight, in part because the people who got there feared me. I don’t back down (ever) from the setting of supporting solutions for good instead of what was politically convenient. And I am not alone., thousands of tech support and customer care people are n my side and they can now dish up the past and hit certain players where it hurts. 

So now we get to TechRadar and its slightly taste adjusted setting. The story (at https://www.techradar.com/pro/denmark-wants-to-replace-windows-and-office-with-linux-and-libreoffice-as-it-seeks-to-embrace-digital-sovereignty) gives us ‘Denmark wants to replace Windows and Office with Linux and LibreOffice as it seeks to embrace digital sovereignty’ a mere 18 hours ago. It has the byline “Denmark bets big on open source revolution and control”. You see, I don’t think it is a big bet. Since the end of the 90’s when times and budgets were good, the IT setting (not merely Microsoft) was to instigate an IT armistice race and those times are gone. So whist certain players went to the ‘safety’ on IT armistice, the governments merely accepted the setting that this is how it was supposed to be, never realising they had other chances. And as I personally see it Microsoft turned that tap off towards others and redirected it to themselves. This is basically how multi-trillion companies are made. Yet the underlying setting is that there was always a larger field and Microsoft was not it. Or better stated Microsoft was not alone here, they merely tempered the setting for themselves, as this setting was never anticipated. A President that shallowed expenses and a larger premise to self. So whilst Denmark was being treated that America wants Greenland as allegedly houses a wealth of minerals, Denmark decided to look what could be done and so they did and in the process woke up Dutch politicians as well. So here we are seeing “Denmark is embarking on an ambitious effort to reduce its reliance on proprietary software from foreign tech giants by transitioning its government systems away from Microsoft offerings Windows and Office 365. The Danish Ministry of Digitalization reportedly plans a phased migration to Linux operating systems and LibreOffice for office productivity.” And as I personally see it, TechRadar is adding the ‘ambitious part’ for non-sentimental reasons. This setting was thwarted by Microsoft in the late 90’s and now they are less likely to succeed as the political field has changed. As I remember open Office is still a direction that is open. As Microsoft closes sluices they couldn’t close them all and now these sluices are the key to lose dependency to Microsoft. And here we see “The core objective, according to Minister Caroline Stage, is strategic: to safeguard Denmark’s digital infrastructure from the uncertainties of geopolitical tensions and the risk of disrupted access to US-based services.” Which is massively bad news for Microsoft because this is the one instance where they never had to protect their home guard before and here those tech support and customer care people will side with Denmark. The people Microsoft cut loose and away as it they didn’t see eye to eye to the larger need of Microsoft, those people will laugh out loud to the lacking needs of Microsoft minded people. In retrospect I saw this coming, but not in this form and not to the degree it will be hitting US-shored businesses. As such we get a few more settings, they all sound bad for Microsoft and it will enhance the needs of IBM and Oracle as they seek European sides to their business. And as we read in, we see the third player to this event. It is shown with “Denmark’s initiative is not without precedent. More than a decade ago, Germany, most notably the city of Munich, attempted to replace Microsoft products with Linux and LibreOffice.” And in that same setting, I remember that a France location had a similar idea, which is likely to have connections to Monaco and Luxembourg. As such Europe goes from 1 to 5 players and the impact on America will not be without consequences. And where TechRadar gives us, without sources “The Danish government, however, appears to be proceeding with greater caution. The rollout will be gradual, and the ministry has stated that it will temporarily revert to Microsoft tools if serious disruptions arise.” This part actually reads like a ‘divert or lose’ situation and Microsoft needs to take heed as this comes with a larger setting. You see, there is an upside for the Netherlands and out reflects back to the Wordperfect Corporation. America made Wordperfect a solution from Utah and it reflected that it was to be put down, but the Dutch had reasons for this solution. It was the first serious solution that perfectly converted syntax’s into Dutch and they had reasons to be proud as the ‘older’ reason is set to the proverbial English setting of 40,000 words and 800 exceptions to the Dutch setting of 800 words and 40,000 exceptions. You see, that was the larger conundrum and that small company in Utah figured the solutions out and that is the larger setting. Getting from Dutch to German, French and English is a breeze (as the depression goes) and after all these years. Did Microsoft protect that IP by paying for these fees year after year? I doubt it, Microsoft is at best a greedy user and it had cut off these fees after at least a decade setting them short by a decade at the very least and that is where these techies come in. They still have the bad feelings of getting cut short with the little retirement fees they were handed and they will massively support any anti-Microsoft feelings they see. So, when your birds come home to roost, they really will have a party.

I feel that TechRadar was ‘spicing’ it up with “Compatibility with Microsoft Office documents and user adaptation to a new interface may pose significant challenges.” I doubt it will be very hard. Open Office had things brewing in 2012 when they were the number one challenge and these files have not been upgraded much. The larger setting is in newer files that has solutions in place that old ones didn’t, but as far as I can tell aside from Excel files, most files can be ‘altered’ to another solution. Consider that Google Docs, Apple Pages and a few others have little to no problems to read word files. Google Sheets and Apple Numbers can for the most read Excel files and I will give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt that Excel is way advanced to those two solutions, but with the gathered intel from them and OpenOffice there are little snags to be expected. When you see that and the joke that PowerPoint has basically become that most of this setting is close to academic. There is a chance that SAP will have to ‘shed’ its neutrality by claiming it is important for its SAP Dashboard to stay with Excel as it is ‘important’ (I merely think that XCelcius was the go to solution with Excel ad that is basically what SAP Dashboard is) and they will shed that when they see the damage they will do to themselves. As I personally see it Google Sheets could step in there. So as Microsoft will be losing 50% of their solutions, the larger demise will start. 

Whilst Wiki is not really a dependable source as it has no real academic value, it does serve its purpose and (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect) we get to see “In November 2004, Novell filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft for alleged anti-competitive behavior (such as tying Word to sales of Windows and withdrawal of support for APIs) that Novell claims led to loss of WordPerfect market share.That lawsuit, after several delays, was dismissed in July 2012. Novell filed an appeal from the judgment in November 2012, but the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed. Novell sought review in the US Supreme Court, but in 2014 that court declined to hear the case, ending the legal action almost a decade after it had begun.” It isn’t what it states, it shows that the Novell vs Microsoft antitrust lawsuit gives Denmark the blanket it needs. I remember the massive setting the WP6 for Windows had and Microsoft used that to push its own solution (Word) and when we see this, we see that Microsoft has a government wheelbarrow (if that expression is still used) and as such Denmark has another handle to shed Microsoft (as have the other four). As I see it, in a decade the laws were meant to protect America solutions, and now we get the Canadian setting of Alludo. A Canadian firm no less and as Wordperfect is still under in France, another side opens up. And it doesn’t look good for Microsoft as the niches they created unite as one bubble against Microsoft and America. There is every chance that we will get to see new innovation but no longer in the hands of Microsoft and whilst this happens Microsoft loses market share after market share.

And as Windows support ends, the people considering shift will merely increase. As such after this I wonder if there is any case left for Azure. It makes you feel blue (and not in a good way) leaving larger gaps for players like Oracle and AWS to step in. Yes they are American, but they at least have had the good of any corporation in view of the needs of their solutions and that is where Denmark might make choices as long as these two have European clouds in mind. As fast as as I see it, they do and as Europe shift, the Arabian peninsula does to.

As this happens in my lifetime gives me a tear of joy. They say pride cometh before the fall and as I see it Microsoft will have a long way to fall down (the boom of impact might be the first boom that is globally felt and heard) as such there is a lot to be seen and soon as Satya Nadella gives ‘us’ the need for ‘friendly cooperation’ will be the first setting that is laughed away by some, but when the company is seen as ‘in danger’ it will be the first massive hit to any American operation and that will set a larger scene (what that scene is, I have no idea. As I see it, this has never happened before) and as Microsoft goes, Apple will shortly follow. It quite literally will be left without option.

So have a great day and if you are in Abu Dhabi, enjoy the Chicken Shawarma as it is lunch time there now. Have a fun day

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November 3, 2023 · 22:50

Weeds in the reeds

That is not a term you are too familiar with, but in the old days (really old days) it became important to clean the reeds of all weeds. Weeds take the nourishment away from the reeds. It seems trivial but when a farmer had to live from a one acre field the impact of weeds becomes irritating and almost damaging. It is that setting that gets us to the Guardian who gives us ‘Microsoft accused of damaging Guardian’s reputation with AI-generated poll’ The article (at https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/31/microsoft-accused-of-damaging-guardians-reputation-with-ai-generated-poll) gives us “Microsoft’s news aggregation service published the automated poll next to a Guardian story about the death of Lilie James, a 21-year-old water polo coach who was found dead with serious head injuries at a school in Sydney last week.” In my personal view it is a populist setting by a desperate joke (Microsoft). 

Take a moment
You see, AI does not exist that is the first thing you need to realise. We do not have the technology to have AI at present. I believe in 10 years we will be able to do so. IBM has two elements that are still in their infancy. The quantum computer and shallow circuits are still not up to speed, but these two essential parts are missing everywhere. I stated before “Machine Learning and Deeper Machine Learning” are two elements and they are awesome, but they are not AI. 

The second stage is that whatever Microsoft has, it is lacking data, they don’t have enough and their data is not clean. To be stupid and tasteless to give us a poll with the three options “murder, accident or suicide”, so whatever idiot (at Microsoft) playing spokesperson with the lamest of all excuses “We have deactivated Microsoft-generated polls for all news articles and we are investigating the cause of the inappropriate content. A poll should not have appeared alongside an article of this nature, and we are taking steps to help prevent this kind of error from reoccurring in the future.”

Stage Three
Stage three is painfully obvious. You see the two missing parts of any poll we see tends to be ‘Don’t know’ and ‘no opinion’, but that doesn’t fit the populist agenda of Microsoft. It wants to rock, rule and conquer and it is done emulating generals like Cadorna, Pillow, Haig, Ludendorff, McClellan and fear not, Microsoft has plenty of stupid people ready to emulate whatever they need to make their ego’s shine at the expense of everyone else.  

The second part is that any poll is set to a hypotheses and the data once verified will result in top-line numbers. The hypotheses is based on insight and whatever Microsoft has can’t do that. In addition any poll needs to be overlooked and optionally revised. This is pretty much 101 in market research. Microsoft ignored it all, just like they ignore all the usual culprits and they care only for the bottom line. That is one of the clear results that this poll gives you. So, whatever idiot was linked to “we are investigating the cause of the inappropriate content” should not be in any IT business. This should never have happened. All the issues state that their was no proper testing, no proper oversight BEFORE publishing and those hiding behind “better to ask forgiveness then ask permission” will merely assist bringing Microsoft down (and that is fine by me).
And consider that in one swoop they also diminished Microsoft Start, which is about to make it market failure number eight. To lose market share to all these competitor eight times over. How long until the core subscriptions will also lose market share. Google and Adobe are ready to take over. In one article some time ago I made mention on how Adobe could set a much larger stage. A stage where Microsoft will only have Excel to rely upon. So how do you think they will maintain their $198,300,000,000 (2022) annual revenue when they lose fight after fight being short sighted and overlooking the obvious? I will let you ponder that but the results and evidence is showing up in more and more places. So how long until others figure out that Microsoft is pretty much the paper tiger we see, we admire the origami skills that were required to fold it, but we forget that any origami can be crushed with the hand of a child. The one obvious setting overlooked by all and especially people listening to Microsoft Marketing who will claim it is the prettiest and it has the sharpest claws of all the tigers in the world. Yet in the end a small child can crush it, not entirely unlike what Nintendo with its Switch did to the Xbox series X. Once you see that spin you will realise the parts I saw appear on the edge of my eyesight 3 years ago and I have written about it often enough. So when Adobe and Google make a partnership and we see that evolve Microsoft with its Office, its Office365, the connected outages, the Exchange server security holes and we can go on for some time. It is (as I personally see it) a diversifying screw-up of the highest kind and now that players like Adobe, Amazon, Google and IBM have their ducks in a row, they can start taking over Microsoft marketshare. This will not happen overnight, but before December 2026 Microsoft will be what we call an empty egg, all shell and no substance. That was the larger danger that they opened to everyone else and I reckon that a player like India will see their own indie developers take the first bites out of what was once a great company. They merely left it (as I personally see it) to greed driven executives, their biggest mistake. So when I made reference with  the chihuahua stating “try Azure, Azure smells nice” I wasn’t kidding. We saw (a few months ago) “Microsoft’s Azure revenue is at least 25% lower than our previous estimates”, so was this fraudulent reporting (like the stuff Sam Bankman-Fried is found guilty of) or was this Microsoft ignoring the system missing part, something any market researcher knows from the get go (see Stage three). Your guess is as good as mine, but a drop of 25% is not a rounding error, it also gives me consideration why Microsoft was so desperate to partner up with Oracle. But Oracle has no master, it can optionally partner with Adobe, IBM and Google too. What it does show (to me at least) is that the Sybase engine that Microsoft bought in 1989 (I think) is no longer hacking it. It was once a contender, now it is down 25% and lagging massively behind Amazon. 

Just like the weeds in the reeds, to be an eight time loser takes a particularly creative kind of stupid. But that is just me. 

Enjoy Friday, the weekend and its 48 hour span are upon us.

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September 15, 2023 · 06:58

Lining

That is the setting. You see, you might not be aware. You might merely see one negative article and dismiss it. That is fair enough, for the most I would have dismissed it too. Yet when you start using Google Search on topics like (for example) “Neom” the negativity list starts adding up and they all have something negative to say. 

A long time ago
So lets take a small sidestep towards the young days of your grandfather. It’s 1886 and plans are made for the world fair 1889. An architect named Gustave Eiffel ends up constructing the Eiffel Tower. It was met with ridicule, criticism and a fair amount of hatred. It is now the most recognised building in the world drawing almost 6 million visitors last year, and they all have to pay. The prices vary, but it amounts to about $75 per person. Do that 6 million times over. I reckon that that so called ugly building has earned its investment back a few dozen times over. 

So back to today and this time I am not using the media. This time I am relying on Popular Mechanics (at https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a44966174/saudi-arabia-line-city/) where we are given ‘Saudi Arabia Is Building an Entire City in a Straight Line. It Makes Zero Sense.’ I wonder why it makes zero sense. You see the start gives us “mathematicians broke down the numbers and calculated what the typical commutes in such a city would look like, discovering that it’d be better the built the city in a circle rather than a straight line” and there I am wonder for whom it would make sense to have a circle?

For the inhabitants of the Apple frisbee? For the Pentagon? Consider the life of most of us. We start at home (point A) and we go to work (point B) we travel from A to B to A and in between on that route we get our shopping done. A straight line makes perfect sense to some, not to all, but to some and the most important part in all of this. This has never been done before, just like the Eiffel Tower. I reckon that by 2050 any web satellite camera will have zoomed in on the line a thousand times a day, because as webcams and YouTube satisfies our needs now, a camera version of Starlink will most likely satisfy the curiosity of our grandchildren. 

The question
What I do not get is the massive amount of negativity around this. Neom and the line are two places that have never been done before and has never been contemplated in history. Neom might become the first megacity that writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra erected in the comic book Dredd in 1977. A city 22 times the size of New York and Saudi Arabia (not America) is making it a reality. And they are doing it all whilst they have the fastest and most complete 5G network on the planet. As such I am giving them the benefit of the doubt. I have to because in my young days I studied ships engineering, not civil engineering (long before my IT and law degrees). In California a circle makes sense, a circle surrounding a park, but Saudi Arabia has a very different eco system and it is a fir bit longer too. 

Then we are given “The city—stretching from the Red City to the city of Tabuk 110 miles away—along with its estimated 9 million inhabitants would be entirely car-less, and instead be tied together by a high-speed rail system that could travel from one end of The Line to the other in just 20 minutes.” Another thing pops up. America and Europe have entire micro economies based on cars and transportation, they would not exist in the Line. Then the train system. A 20 minute ride from end to end. Consider that this line is 170Km long. In the Netherlands that covers Groningen to Utrecht and it takes that train 2 hours to get there. 600% longer and OK, they stop a few times, and it isn’t high speed, but that is what there is and you cannot make high speed trains work there under those conditions. 

The one part we are missing is that the line is 500 metres high. As such the building is significantly higher than Central Park Tower (longer and wider too). It raises even more questions, questions I can merely grasp at, but the others are merely coming with negativity. I wonder why. What I like about it is that no one has ever done this before and here Saudi Arabia is leading the way. If they pull this off (and I hope they do), the west needs to take a long hard look at itself. We might see all the experts talking the BS they do, but when this is done we get to see the excuses, the blame game, the lack of insight and the media would be regarded as culprit number one. 

Popular mechanics also had a few good idea’s as they tend to do. They give us “Although the paper mostly focuses on the mathematical shortcomings of The Line’s design, it also brings up some good practical problems. If the city’s main train line malfunctions for any reason, for example, it could effectively cut off residents from millions of people—an idea that’s unthinkable in today’s modern metropolises.” And that matters how? I have two best friends. I haven’t seen them in decades as they live on another continent. I have video chat, phone and email to keep in touch. Beyond that my connections over the last two decades have been work and social events around me. I never had the need to meet up with millions and the train is a realistic idea, but things break and things get fixed. Perhaps the train line will have a spare line? Just a thought. In todays world people have become self isolating, it is a result of all kinds of reasons, perhaps the line will offer an alternative?

If there is my need for realism, it becomes the setting of the 500 metres height. There might be all kinds of reasons why it is that high, but on what levels will people be? And then the idea that this one line will house 9,000,000 people. The largest three cities are Tokyo, Delhi an Shanghai, still a fair bit larger than this line, but what area do they cover, what pollution do they create and how much of the ecological side are getting destroyed in the process? This is the consequence of old day thinking. As such the line is starting to make more sense, but it is also a place with more questions. I reckon time will take care of most of them, just like in the days of Gustave Eiffel. Evolution will take care of itself and when one is done the next will come and then one more and for now Neom, the line and Mukaab (which will be 400 by 400 by 400 metres). All in Saudi Arabia and all dwarfing most other architectural achievements. Three places clearly visible from space. So why the negativity? Perhaps the EU and US are realising that they are done for, but who instigated that part? Was it their lack of evidence (small 5G reference), their inability to create because they are now too broke to get anything done? You tell me, I am not sure of any of it. But no matter how these three are completed, it seems to me that Saudi Arabia has its focal point towards the future, all whilst America in true Excel style merely looks at the next quarter, a time frame that does not allow for projects that we are currently seeing in Saudi Arabia. 

There was one final thought that hit me at the end of all this. The article gives us “If its 9 million inhabitants are homogeneously distributed in the city, each kilometre will have roughly 53,000 people” from that point of view it is denser than Manilla, the most dense city in the world with 43,064 people per kilometre. You see, it isn’t the fact that Manilla isn’t the densest city, it is that these metrics would no longer matter because based on the EIU’s Global Liveability Index for 2023, Manila placed 136th among 173 cities. Then we get that the current metro area population of Delhi in 2023 is 32,941,000 almost 400% higher than the Line. Certain metrics would become obsolete and I reckon that there is every chance that a place like the Line would grace the top 10 of the EIU’s Global Liveability Index from the very start. Did anyone consider those metrics?

Enjoy the upcoming last workday of the week.

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June 7, 2022 · 20:22

The presentation will begin in one line

Yes, here we are one line further. In the recent past I gave rise to an innovation in presentation software that could bring a whole lot of trouble to Microsoft. They will be in denial, making all kinds of claims. Yet the foundation of worry (for Microsoft) remains. Even as I wanted to keep it exclusively for Adobe, I am not in contact with them and then it hit me. The solution could work with Google Slides as well. They are not yet as sophisticated as anything Adobe has, but to outstrip Microsoft might be a nice alternative. The idea that a free program could be enhanced so that Microsoft could lose up to 24% of their foundational corner is appealing (to me). If I get to pull it off, the station of Google Slides and optionally Apple Keynote could see a much larger pull and people will move away from Microsoft. We see Unionisation issues. We are given ‘Microsoft Issues Emergency Windows 10, 11 & Server Security Update’, as well as “Since March, however, if you run the RDgateway broker service on Server 2022 (and only that version), the monthly cumulative updates have removed that service. This behaviour is not normal; this is a bug.” Yes, we get it, Microsoft has bugs and it is having too many of those, all whilst other settings are equally problematic and that is where Microsoft finds itself. Losing with software and hardware to Sony and Apple. Losing web and cloud settings to Amazon and what do you think will happen when the foundational use of Microsoft Office loses the Powerpoint population to Google Slides? Yes, we know it, PowerPoint has so much to offer, but it merely added iterative settings over the last 10 years. You see between THEIR claim of what innovation is and what real innovation is comes with a gap and in the case of Microsoft it is the size of the Gran Canyon. So if I offer this one part, this one innovative part to Google and it shows to change the game, what will YOU do? Keep on believing that Microsoft will fix it? It was less than a week ago when we were given “Security researchers have identified a new MS Office vulnerability that could seriously affect Microsoft Word users”, and the Verge reported ‘China-linked hackers are exploiting a new vulnerability in Microsoft Office’ (at https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/1/23150318/microsoft-office-china-hackers-exploiting-follina-vulnerability-tibet), so how much longer will you take chances? I get it, there is very little that can compete with Microsoft Excel, but when I can create something so innovative, something that Microsoft should have fixed a DECADE AGO and I give it to Google (sell it, I meant). I could add it to my IP bundle 1. When I can pull that off, do you think that the 17%-29% that does not rely on Microsoft Excel will stay in that dangerous spot? I admire loyalty, but that does require the software firm to be entitled to that loyalty and they dropped the ball way too often. 

As such the game is on and this all started less than 2 months ago when I saw something in a presentation that made me shiver. In two decades Microsoft had not come up with a solution and I saw it in minutes, I adjusted that simple view, added a few elements and It could easily be added to the Google suite. Changing the game is easy when you know where to look. A setting that could cost up to 29% of a core business. I wonder what happens to the Microsoft stock when I pull this off. Perhaps someone in that company will finally figure out that what they market is not representative of the truth. I just wonder if they even realise how far of course they have gone through the presentation of spin. The fact that I can pose that much of a danger is enabling in so many ways.

I preferred to have handed it to Adobe, nothing bad about Google, but it coincides with a weird dream, one I described in ‘The hardware perimeter’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/02/25/the-hardware-perimeter/) and ‘Pristine and weird’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/02/24/pristine-and-weird/) on the 24th and 25th of February 2022. There I saw an Adobe future becoming the larger player of high end office solutions. And even as I was a dream, I saw things and applications that I have never seen before, The application of blockchain to documents and data projects. Adobe had solved certain parts that could set a Lifestage to any document, who made it, who changed it, where it was changed and so on and the legal industry as well as large corporations were going gaga (not the singer) for that solution. As such giving them the presentation edge made sense, but in this Google is just as much a player as Adobe, not as refined, but for the bulk of the users good enough. 

A simple presentation that shows where the big boys are and where they could end up if they do not fix their game. #Justsaying

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March 9, 2022 · 17:08

Microsoft, for cold laundry

Yes, there is a need to go there. You see there is the setting that we kick Microsoft as a civic duty, but how long do you need to kick them for it to be regarded as for personal pleasure? Yes, that is the question and it is more to the point than you think it is. Two days ago I wrote ‘What we hope for’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/07/what-we-hope-for/) there I gave the setting that Microsoft is in more trouble than we think they are. They are losing the gaming niche, the ‘tablet’ niche, the cloud niche, the SaaS niche and optionally the office niche as well. That is a lot of terrain to lose. I also stated there ““Microsoft is in talks to acquire cybersecurity research and incident response company Mandiant, according to people familiar with the discussions, a deal that would bolster efforts to protect customers from hacks and breaches”, you see, it is not merely “bolster efforts to protect customers”, it is about preventing and protecting the customers you have and as we are seeing several Microsoft issues”, a few hours ago I learned that they do not even have that. ArabNews gives us ‘Google buys Mandiant for $5.4 billion’, the article (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/2038611/business-economy) “Google is fortifying its cloud services with a $5.4 billion acquisition of the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, the companies announced Tuesday”, as such the clouds around Microsoft seem increasingly less secure soon enough. Microsoft will find someone (I think) and they need to find someone and set the stage to a stronger Microsoft. Yet as I see it they lose gaming to Amazon (I was happy to help Amazon do that), their Surface thingamajig will lose to the Apple iPad more and more, and the Mac Air book takes what is left and the cloud is increasingly less and less secure, as such they are losing market share to all the other cloud providers. The SaaS niche is different, it relies on the cloud, lose one and you tend to lose the other as well to some degree. So now the last straw for Microsoft is their good old Office backbone. It is firm (for now) but the cyber issues will affect their mail system and it already has had a few issues. But the big push could come from a very different angle. Adobe will be the largest player in several ways. There is additional consideration that when business aligns for Meta, Adobe will get a fair share of that business and should they push for the an ‘office setting’ they could clearly clean house. The last setting is pure speculation. There is no educated guess in play. They need their version of Excel, Word, Powerpoint and Mail versions to impact Microsoft even larger, but that is not outside of their abilities to do so and moreover, as Meta will go in 2024 Adobe will feel forced to go there. If only to cater to the millions of GoPro users who will see new business ventures in a Hybrid setting of the Web, Web3.0 and Meta. I think that Google lacks more elements than Adobe does so Adobe is in a good place. No matter how we think it will go, I feel more and more certain that Microsoft is about to lose a hell of a lot more than they bargained for. I wonder if they ever saw that part coming as they increasingly believed the spin they put out there as well. Consider their 2018 setting: ‘The most powerful console in the world’, it was surpassed by the weakest (Nintendo Switch), it will optionally also be surpassed by the Amazon Luna (if I get it my way, ha ha ha). At that point, what did $68.7 billion get them (as well as the $7.5 billion for Bethesda)? Seventy five billion to end up in 4th position in gaming? Google buying what they need for Cyber security? One could argue that soon the buzzards will circle Microsoft, but that might be a little too negative. 

I saw Microsoft grow from nothing to the behemoth that decided what we wanted. Now it is turning out that too many are eager to find someone else, in too many IT fields. There will be Microsoft lovers out there, eager to state that I am wrong. I could be, I freely admit it, but when you put the facts together, when you collect the information out there and the weaknesses that they show gives a larger rise to my version (which has speculative sides) and the largest setting is the one we do not have. What will Adobe do in 2023/2024. It will impact several players a lot.

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November 4, 2017 · 15:07

Another opinion

Today is about something I read yesterday. It was an opinion piece in the Guardian. The title ‘How to stop Google and Facebook from becoming even more powerful‘ sounds all nice and sexy, but is that what we want? The subtitle ‘Banning these tech giants from buying any more companies would prevent them from entrenching their monopoly position – and help protect our freedom‘ is nothing that I am taking too seriously. The ‘freedom’ of people is too often being hindered by other means. The fact that IBM and Microsoft have had such places of power for decades shows me to be right to a larger extent. Freedom is a dangerous ploy to use to get things your way, but the players (not merely the writers of the opinion piece) have played this game before and they played it well. He has played the fear mongering card often and he knows how to play it. When it came to the new tax reform bill we hear “Kennedy believes reducing taxes on businesses could allow them the funding to hire more people and raise wages“, yet in equal measure it does not stop companies to pour it all into the bonus of the members of those boards of directors. So getting back to the Guardian, it is the part “a fundamental problem that Facebook and Google cannot solve on their own; these institutions are designed to gather vast amounts of information about every American, but they are not built to manage that information in the interest of those individuals or the public as a whole, such as by preventing Russian hackers from targeting propaganda at specific voters“, he mixes up a few elements and hopes that fear and anti-communism does the rest. When we see ‘not built to manage that information‘, we are forgetting the fact that they do not need to do this to the degree he proclaims, because if that is so, Facebook could have just given the data dump to the NSA, couldn’t they? The systems are more and more automated and the people decide what to like and what or who to follow. You see, Facebook has become more and more granular into finding populations on whom to advertise to, who to address and who to invite towards the groups that some seek. It was their version to counter Google AdWords, a freedom of speech that is protected in the USA in the first amendment and as such free speech goes overboard (like on steroids). The US did this to set up the failed dominos against Brexit, they went so far that the former President of the United States was stupid enough to speak out the political issues of another nation, whilst everyone knew that this was largely about corporate greed, the benefit of large corporations, their status quo now endangered in Europe. So how long until that same freedom is used by everyone else to push whatever agenda they had? That is the danger (or is that the consequence of free speech), because those liberals wanted to take accountability out of the equation, the people became entangled into a stream of feeble minded needs and rights in moving towards the waterfalls of too much data and information, call it death by spam drowning us in every device we have. It gets worse as we can often no longer tell between real information and sponsored words, they all use the same template and they all use Facebook to get their view across, merely because it is the largest player.

In this we get to the next part, because the story gets a nice twist, one that can be used against the corporations and against the US. You see with “how to ensure Google, Facebook and the other giant platform monopolists truly serve the political and commercial interests of the American people“, in this we see the countering by 96% of the population of this planet, because the US is only 4% in all this (this planets population that is) and as such any move could be used as evidence to remove all tax breaks from those corporations outside of America because discriminating for one nations will take them away from global consideration for all others. That was a stupid move in all this by those working for John Kennedy. As I see it there should never be a political interest, because you will always oppose 50% of that one consideration. The laws of no accountability took care of that part. There can be no political interest; there can merely be the option and opportunity to facilitate to any and all political needs and political information, in this digital age is there another way? Perhaps there is one but I am pretty sure that I cannot think of any that stops others in one way or another, which is the foundation of discrimination. So, by giving all the players in this a chance to show their case, and getting their interests across, we cater to some level of fairness. In this, there is no actual fairness and no real political catering, there will be merely political discrimination in one form or another and such forms of discrimination will merely hinder a much larger group of people to find the facts and to decide for themselves where they stand. This is the entrenched future of non-accountable free speech, and as for the commercial interest of the American people? In my view that is a group that is even more hollow than any other group. The commercial interest of the American people changes with almost every voice you hear. The bulk not in greed, but in support to feed and give their family a future, but they do not get to have a real voice. The voices that decide on it are merely greed driven and it is about their personal greed, not that of their nation. So by catering to ‘the commercial interests of the American people‘ they are merely catering to greed, unchecked, unregulated and outside of many legal settings that limits greed. That makes the entire opinion piece interesting because the piece in my mind seems to oppose what is good for the people. Now, we can argue that Google is slightly greedy by the prices they set with their Pixel 2, yet they are still decently cheaper than both Samsung and Apple, for what the people get they get it for hundreds of dollars cheaper than the new Apple X, so it seems that Google is catering to the American people by offering a top range device for a lot less than its competitor. How is that a bad business model? As it comes to data, the people of the world have been offered most of all of it at no charge, for 2 decades the people were able to search what we needed to find, in opposition, we see Bing (by Microsoft) to offer some limited version of this. A version made by someone who was better off being brain-dead at birth. By catering to the people by filtering through assumption we never get what we needed. So as I see it, the continuation of Google is a lot more essential than American politicians are comfortable with. For Facebook there is another part that the piece illuminates. The view of “For one thing, there is no doubt these corporations qualify for antitrust regulation. Facebook, for instance, has 77% of mobile social networking traffic in the United States, with just over half of all American adults using Facebook every day” is part of it. Now I get it that these people are merely looking at the American side. Yet Facebook has a lot more. When we accept: “Facebook has more than a billion active users: The platform has 1.71 billion monthly active users and 1.13 billion daily active users, on average. Facebook boasts 1.57 billion mobile monthly active users and 1.03 million mobile daily active users, on average” we see that the American population is below 15% of all Facebook users. America has become part of a global community and that is scaring the politicians in America a lot more than anything else. You see the people are starting to learn on how they were sold some cheap package and their quality of life has gone out the window.
Now everyone is out in arms and as Google and Facebook are largely truly independent the politicians and certain ‘captains of industry‘ can’t push for their personal needs. Now they are trying to take off the gloves and see if they can punch their way upwards. Their desperation shows even better with “Nearly all new online advertising spending goes to just Facebook and Google, and those two companies refer over half of all traffic to news websites“. You see until the early 2000’s the advertisement space was a joke, a few people has ludicrous prices and the papers lived of advertisements. People were often unable to promote their business because the prices were ridiculous, hundreds of dollars for a small image and a few words. Hoping someone would read it. Google decided that they could do better and they decided to make something affordable, suddenly everyone could afford to show their place and/or product for mere dollars, not for hundreds of dollars to a specific larger audience than ever before. In less than 8 years the print advertisement has become almost a wash, the advertisers are targeting THEIR audience and those others, who wanted to milk their systems for the maximum time are now out of a job, out of a business because they were all about the Status Quo. So now we see the writers of this opinion piece “Barry Lynn is the Executive Director of the Open Markets Institute. Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Open Markets Institute” advocating opposition to a world they and their peers created. You see the corporate world is a lot larger than these two players. Apple, Amazon, Walmart, Verizon and Cardinal Health. None of them are mentioned. This gives a more and more critical view that these two players are trying to get global visibility because their tune is getting old and tired in the US, or is that New America as they call it? And none are mentioning General Electric in all this. There are true boogeymen in America who are wrestling in on the American Quality of Life; the weird this is that is the one element that Google and Facebook are not inhibiting. So if it is truly about growing America, would having a go at the other players be more important? Well we can argue against that with the quote “Seven years ago, Google paid $700m for a company called ITA that provides software for the travel industry. The Department of Justice approved the deal on the condition that Google keep access to the software open to other businesses for at least 5 years. This year, Google closed that access“, so as I read it, the industry had 5 years to make something equal or better to the ITA software. So where is that software now? We have seen for decades that software can be vultured on for a lot less, but that always comes with an end date. So as there is no alternative, no new software those people will just have to go to Google. This is a simple world. You either have the product we need, or we get it somewhere else. Yet in the end you still need to bring a product to the table. We saw this as WordPerfect was pushed out of the world and MS Word remained. It was done to Lotus by Excel and the least said about the predecessors of PowerPoint the Better (although some were impressively cool and better than what we have now). Even in Databases, Access was the most inferior product. Now who remembers dBase, SuperBase or FoxBase? So this is not the first time it happens, so why cry now? In my view it is not about the people writing it, it is about the businesses who are now being pushed out of the market because the Status Quo days are over and the people want to know what is actually happening and they are more likely to hear that from Google and Facebook that they will from Bing and friends. Now I agree that there are issues on several levels and improvements are needed, but we know that this is work in progress. In my view it started a long time ago. When we allowed the glossy news from certain publishers go forth with innuendo and advertisements go through, whilst not having to pay GST (read: VAT) on their product, they saw a nice little loophole to gain a lot more. This is how some people like Rupert Murdoch really made a bundle. Newspapers, magazines and other printed issues. Now it is going Digital at 0.1% of the cost, so the numbers of players in this field are growing almost exponentially and fake news is becoming a problem. Not just for the people bringing the news, but in equal measure any support player connected to it and it is the first and most visible play on ‘free speech’ going over the edge. All because no one in America wanted to entertain the actual need for accountability.

This is merely another opinion in all this and you will need to decide for yourself if my view is valid or not. And before you lash out against Google and Facebook (something I have done in the past and will do so again in the future), consider, did they cost you money, did they ask you to pay or did they give you options at $0? Now we know they get their money in other ways, but it has not cost us anything. So why cry? It seems to me that the Open Markets Institute has its own agenda, I am merely wondering if it was about open markets or about markets for friends who are losing their markets because they were unwilling to move forward. It is merely a view I am considering. It is up to you to decide what you think is actually going in. And when you pay $650 (+$299 for Apple care in addition) more for your new iPhone , $650 (or $949) more than its competitor, what that because it was really that much better, was it because of some proclaimed open market or was it because of something else?

It’s your opinion (read: your point of view) and you get to decide!

 

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