For many, it is a
Windows world out there. Microsoft has been accused of monopoly. It has dominated the desktop with its OS. And Bill Gates... the richest man in the world.
Recent tech innovations especially on the web has challenged its dominance (and I won't even talk about the open source projects here now). It seems like for the end-user, it doesn't really matter what OS is on the desktop or on the laptop, or whatever web-enabled device. What has become more important is the browser. Microsoft's Internet Explorer has been challenged by Firefox, Opera, Chrome, etc.
Lately, Google has challenged its MS Office suite with Google's online products especially with the
Google Docs applications.
Maybe in the future MS will abandon Windows as its flagship product. Windows 7, the successor of Vista, will be free from bloat with only the essentials. Other application are to be downloaded on-demand. The OS even
debuted on a netbook and
(later). This is a move away from previous releases where Microsoft tried to provide almost everything out-of-the-box. They have even followed Google by introducing
web-based Office programs.
Microsoft's
launching of Azure is a clear indication that it is going into the cloud computing business. Azure is being dubbed the operating system of the internet. The first time I heard something similar to this was that
The Browser Is The New Operating System.
On something closer to home...Looking at
Windows Azure I can't help but recall
morph. Looks similar to me. Maybe it's all that cloud computing software-as-a-service stuff that are all new to me. There's even
elastic compute cloud and its kin.
Not too long ago, I was just more used to
client-server...
