Memex 1.1

From the NYT’s Bits Blog celebration of Google’s 10th birthday.

Google’s age: 10
Microsoft’s age: 33

Google’s revenue in the last 4 quarters: $19.6 billion
Microsoft’s revenue in the last 4 quarters: $60.4 billion

Microsoft’s revenue at age 10: $140 million
($279 million in today’s dollars)

Google’s revenue per hour in the last 4 quarters: $2.2 million
Microsoft’s revenue per hour in the last 4 quarters: $6.9 million

Google net income in the last 4 quarters: $4.85 billion
Microsoft’s net income in the last 4 quarters: $17.6 billion

Google employees, as of June 30th: 19,604
Microsoft employees, as of May 31st: 89,809

Google’s revenue per employee: $1 million
Microsoft revenue per employee: $672,000

Market value of Google: $142 billion
Market value of Microsoft: $241 billion

Number of tech companies with a market value larger than Google’s: 3 (Microsoft, IBM and Apple, in that order)

Worldwide searches on Google in July: 48.7 billion
Worldwide searches on Microsoft in July: 2.3 billion

Worldwide searches per hour on Google in July: 65 million
Worldwide searches per hour on Microsoft in July: 3.1 million

You may have seen the news that Google is launching its own (open source) browser, codenamed Chrome. According to the company blog,

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

In reality, this takes us back to the original threat/promise of Netscape — the thing that threatened Microsoft so much that it set out to destroy Netscape. This was the idea that the browser was destined to become the key piece of software — almost an operating system in its own right.

Google Chrome takes up that idea, and holds out the promise of making it a reality. As Nick Carr puts it, Chrome

promises a similar leap in the capacity of the cloud to run applications speedily, securely, and simultaneously. Indeed, it is the first browser built from the ground up with the idea of running applications rather than displaying pages. It takes the browser’s file-tab metaphor, a metaphor reflecting the old idea of the web as a collection of pages, and repurposes it for application multitasking. Chrome is the first cloud browser.

See the exposition in Google’s Comic Book for an outline of the thinking that went into Chrome. It’s basically the first multi-threaded browser.

This is an important strategic move by Google. To quote Carr again,

Google is motivated by something much larger than its congenital hatred of Microsoft. It knows that its future, both as a business and as an idea (and Google’s always been both), hinges on the continued rapid expansion of the usefulness of the Internet, which in turn hinges on the continued rapid expansion of the capabilities of web apps, which in turn hinges on rapid improvements in the workings of web browsers.

To Google, the browser has become a weak link in the cloud system - the needle’s eye through which the outputs of the company’s massive data centers usually have to pass to reach the user - and as a result the browser has to be rethought, revamped, retooled, modernized…

I’ve no doubt that this development will be presented in the mainstream media as Google’s “attempt to capture the browser market”. That would be a misconception IMHO. By making Chrome open source Google is ensuring that any browser that seeks to stay competitive has to take up the multi-threading idea. Which will make cloud computing even more pervasive. Which will further increase Google’s importance. As a strategy, it’s fiendishly clever.

And just in case the folks in Cupertino are sniggering, this is a harbinger of things to come on the mobile phone front too. Google has sussed that the (closed) iPhone will be difficult to beat, so its attack is based on an open platform (Android). Smart.

Many thanks to Gerard for the original link (even though he hates the Comic Book!)

LATER: I can’t run Chrome because the first beta release only runs under Windows Vista (if you please), but TechCrunch has been using it and likes it a lot.

STILL LATER: Kate Greene has a useful overview in Tech Review. And the Register published a perceptive piece by Tim Anderson.

My main employer is hooked on Microsoft stuff. The only way to claim travel expenses is via the organisation’s intranet (which is reasonable, I guess, in this day and age). But guess what — you can’t do it with a Mac.

Other pictures here.

From BBC NEWS…

Microsoft has kicked off a research project to create software that will take over when it retires Windows.

Called Midori, the cut-down operating system is radically different to Microsoft’s older programs.

It is centred on the internet and does away with the dependencies that tie Windows to a single PC.

It is seen as Microsoft’s answer to rivals’ use of “virtualisation” as a way to solve many of the problems of modern-day computing…

Hmmm… Some people think that midori is a “beautiful green color liqueur with refreshing and fruity taste of melon” which “can be used to mix a wide range of juices, spirits”.

Interesting Register Hardware report.

According to US investment house BMO Capital Markets, cited by AppleInsider, Apple will have shipped up to 2.5m Macs between April and June inclusive - enough for a 39 per cent year-on-year growth rate.

More to the point, that rate of increase is more than three times the industry average of 12.2 per cent.

BMO analyst Keith Bachman told investors that it’s largely the result of Windows Vista: “Thus far, user satisfaction ratings for Vista have been weak, and start-up times for Vista have been known to be much slower than the Mac OS X. Thus, more than 50 per cent of recent customers buying Macs in Apple retail stores are first-time buyers.”

From the Sydney Morning Herald…

THERE has been speculation recently about what is being called an internal Facebook valuation - a value the company has assigned to its own common stock that is drastically lower than the $15 billion valuation set so publicly last year by Microsoft’s investment.

According to the transcript of a June 13 case-management conference in the lawsuit settled last week between Facebook and ConnectU - one of the few documents in the case not under seal - that figure is $3.75 billion, or one-quarter of the Microsoft valuation.

ConnectU had claimed that Mark Zuckerberg, a former employee and Facebook’s founder, got his idea from ConnectU.

The relevant passage from the document, under the section titled Defendant ConnectU’s Position, said: “The term sheet and settlement agreement is also unenforceable because it was procured by Facebook’s fraud. Indeed, based on a formal valuation resolution approved by Facebook’s board of directors but concealed from ConnectU, the stock portion of the purported agreement is worth only one-quarter of its apparent value based on Facebook’s public press releases.”

The piece goes on to point out that Microsoft bought preferred stock — i.e. ones with special voting rights, so the ConnectU figure is probably too low. But it’s still not $15 billion.

Interesting Economist profile of Diane Greene.

ALPHA male, flamboyant, brash, megalomaniacal. Profiles of leading high-tech bosses tend to be littered with these terms, signs of the traits that they seem to need to make it to the top of the computer industry and stay there. But none of them applies to Diane Greene, the chief executive of VMware. Her company, which sells software that makes data centres run more efficiently, has quietly become the world’s fourth-most-valuable publicly traded software company, with a stockmarket value of nearly $20 billion. Its public listing last August was a bit like the heady dotcom days. Since then, the old guard has started ganging up on the newcomer, which boasts quarterly sales of nearly $440m and expects to grow by 50% this year. Microsoft, in particular, has vowed to take on VMware. On June 26th the software giant released its first competing product—predictably, as a free add-on to its flagship Windows operating system. How will Ms Greene play in the rough and tumble of the big league?

From Good Morning Silicon Valley.

For people who are too wary of commitment to shell out upwards of $375 for Microsoft Office Professional or $100 or more on the Home and Student edition, Microsoft is introducing a subscription version. For $70 a year, you’ll be able to rent Microsoft Equipt, a package that combines Office with Microsoft’s Live OneCare security package, with free upgrades when new versions arrive and access to the already free Live Workspace and other online products. The Equipt package can be installed on up to three PCs at a time. Whether this represents a good deal depends on the nature of your needs for Office and the worth to you of OneCare, but it does lower the entry barrier for holdouts.

The curious part of the move is Microsoft’s choice of a retail channel — initially, at least, Equipt will be available only through the nearly 700 Circuit City stores. Microsoft believes that the concept of Equipt represents a “complicated value proposition,” and that the staff of Circuit City has the ability, according to Office group product manager Bryson Gordon, to engage customers in a “kind of a high-touch scenario. Equipt is better sold than bought.” Circuit City undoubtedly appreciated the kind words, especially as its stock dropped to a 17-year low after Blockbuster came to its senses and dropped its $1.35 billion takeover offer.

According to this report, Microsoft is to stop selling XP next Monday. Stand by for a thriving market on eBay.