Professor Elam

5 responses to “Google Surpasses MSFT”

1. 

   BURG Watch Phone

   October 3, 2012

   There are initiatives to keep them out of communities.

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2. 

   Ruben Medrano, Sr.

   October 4, 2012

   The history of Microsoft (its first business name was Micro-soft) dates to 1975 when I was 15 years old. At the age of 10 I was reading an MIT book “Principles of Radar” for leisure at the library when I ran into Popular Electronics Magazine. I awaited the new edition every month as I would dream of all the things I might do one day. You see, I wanted to become a scientist. I remember when in 1975 Popular Electronics displayed on the cover the Altair 8800, the very same one that thrust Bill Gates and Paul Allen into action. There is no telling where we would be today had it not been for circumstances surrounding the Altair.
   Bill Gates and Paul Allen acted upon their dreams, I did not. But because they did, they reined in the era of affordable computing and we all know the rest of the story. Keep in mind that when the “thinkers” behind the companies that have and will grow bigger than Microsoft, most, when they were youngsters, owned a PC running Billy-Ware (my term for Windows and DOS). Many still run their companies and home computers on the same thing. In the grand scheme of things, many, and I mean thousands, of companies would not exist today (or had existed) without Microsoft. That is one thing that no matter how big they get they cannot take away from MS.
   As for Dells suggestion that Apple fold, it might have very well happened had it not been for a few people like Bill Gates. You see, Bill Gates provided Apple with a much needed influx of cash when Apple was staring down the end of the bankruptcy barrel. I do not believe Mr. Dell had as much money at the time where he would be able provide cash for a rescue of Apple (Mr. Jobs fished for money in a lot of places at that time) so his advice was dead-on.
   Google and Walmart will one day meet their match and then their match will slip right on past them to become even bigger. History has seen the big get bigger then become the biggest. One day they will no longer be the biggest while some of the biggest will also no longer be amongst us. Technology births and buries many companies just like any other money-making industry.

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3. 

   Dennis Elam

   October 5, 2012

   Ruben
   Before we give Gates too much credit, recall that when he bid on the software for IBM he did not have a program himself. Having secured the bid he returned to Seattle and bought a program for $50,000 from Seattle Computing that became MSFT DOS, which was more or less a nightmare to use.
   If it had not been Gates someone else would have done it just as Wozniak invented the Apple computer.
   I wouldn’t beat myself up about not acting on an idea when you were 15. Gates had well to do parents so that he could handily move from Harvard to New Mexico. Also see Gladwell’s article on Gates in Outliers.

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4. 

   Ruben Medrano, Sr.

   October 5, 2012

   Yes sir, I am very aware on how the original QDOS 0.10 transformed into 86-DOS 0.3 to Microsoft purchasing all rights to DOS in 1981 from Seattle Computer. I have read countless books, magazines, and anything I can get my hands on about Bill Gates, his wealthy family (did you know his grandmother gave him the pet name “Trey”?), Microsoft, and other computing companies. I give credit to Bill Gates and Paul Allen for being able to see the future and acting quickly to make purchase of work they were unable to do on their own (given time they probably could have written the code themselves). They practiced an art thoroughly disguised today of committing to something before actually having it. It was like their modus operandi…that is what I give him credit for.
   As for Wozniak inventing the Apple, he as well as MS had their fair share of accusations permeating from the depths of Xerox where many attributes and functions of the Apple were found several years before. The early history of the PC and Apple (running on a jazzy Unix Kernel) read like great mystery novels intertwined with a spy novel and a hint of suspense, action, and even romance.
   I have probably read too many things about Billy (in my own world of make belief, I know Bill Gates well enough to call him Billy) as I am a diehard Billy supporter. But mostly I envy all of the creators of the modern computer (from the 1930s and even further back by a few hundred years if one wants to get technical about it) because they are what I had always wanted to be as a kid: an inventor.
   Why did I mention the book Principles of Radar earlier? It was while reading that book that I took out paper and drew a visionary system of satellites that circled Earth (I was heavy into reading of the space race) that were able to “talk” to a device in a car translating the signal to a built-in monitor in the dash board that would allow a driver to see where he was going and even inputting where he wanted to go. (I had also read a book on the difficulties of getting around Paris with its numerous one-way roads and how cab drivers had to become certified to operate in Paris.) I will always remember it as one of the ideas that got away (5 years later the military put in place what would become GPS) and because of my inability to act on them, with a passionate heart embrace those that do. Mr. Gates and Mr. Allen are two such people.

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5. 

   Alfred Salazar Jr.

   October 9, 2012

   It was only a matter of time before Google would surpass Microsoft. There have been commercials recently with people choosing Bing over Google. I have tried Bing myself and really hate it. All I use is Google to get my research done. This is “BIG” news and I wonder what Microsoft is going to say or do. I hope we don’t see Microsoft taking Google to court now, like with the case of Apple( haha, joke). As far as Dell and Apple, well Apple will be around for a very long time.

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