4 ms·

.. and this makes it the most valuable company on the planet. How did they achieve that in your opinion?

option_greek 5y ago
Outlook365 + azure ad They didn't need anything else. Till there is no competition for user management and corporate email, they will be in business.
- matoro 5y ago
  Does Gsuite not count as competition? It even fills the MS Office role with Gdocs.
  - nicce 5y ago
    Does it? It requires internet connection and sends all company data for third party. Smooth perfomance is locked for using Chrome browser.
  - quartesixte 5y ago
    Excel rules the corporate world. And to a certain extent, Outlook. But that’s mostly due to sheer inertia.
  - option_greek 5y ago
    It would and to certain extent it does especially with startups etc. Where they dropped the ball is not being serious about the enterprise support. There are other reasons as well like attaching Google's name to the product there by making it non-serious (as in free/personal vs enterprisey/serious) due to Gmail being associated with personal email. If they are serious they should have gone with a separate brand with competent support. Despite all the above reasons, the main reason for the current zero competition is because for all enterprises,using azure AD is a natural progression from their much abused on-prem AD which has been linked as the primary mechanism for user auth across all kinds of products (MS and non MS). To be honest, MS doesn't have to do anything now. Just sit back and collect the money (and once in a while acquire things that have potential to become enterprisey like the GitHub).
  - flatiron 5y ago
    Have you ever worked at a company that didn’t use office? I haven’t.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      Where I work, Office is being used less & less in favor of Google docs, so I'm not sure what the future holds. MS bundling OS/Office licenses more agressively I'm guessing will be one factor. As a side note, this increased use of Docs is unfortunately out of sync with security policy where I work. Certain types of data are only allowed to be shared through an encrypted portal that auto-deletes the file... Unless you put that data in a Google Sheet and hit the "share" button.
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    Google bounces incoming mail on mailboxes that are locked for "suspicious" activity or logins. I've had it happen a few times as a result of a false positive and it's horrible. It's obvious no one at Google ever sits down and asks "will this be good for our users?" I have a free 50 user legacy account with Google Workspace and I only use it for personal stuff. I don't trust it for business.
bogwog 5y ago
> How did they achieve that in your opinion? Because the FTC is asleep at the wheel.
chasil 5y ago
Microsoft has never had a primary focus on retail consumers. The tools available on enterprise Windows platforms are vast compared to what an individual user can control on their standalone machine. These intrusive new Edge features have not appeared on my corporate desktop that is joined to Active Directory, and they likely never will. For individual consumers that prefer Chrome, it is likely time to install and learn a new operating system. Google could take some action to stop this. There could be a legal approach involving antitrust, but Google has its own problems with that issue at the moment, and action would likely have to be coordinated with Mozilla. Alternately, Google could force technologies into Chromium that compromise Microsoft, but are not sufficiently hostile to prompt a fork. I have thought that a tight binding of Go into Chromium, similar to Mozilla's actions with Rust, might make the entire market rethink C# and the .NET CLR. Kotlin can also be deployed at the JavaScript layer, and that would be an interesting platform to force-feed to Edge. Google has likely already had extensive internal discussions on transforming Chromium into a poison pill for Windows.

Outlook365 + azure ad They didn't need anything else. Till there is no competition for user management and corporate email, they will be in business.

matoro 5y ago
Does Gsuite not count as competition? It even fills the MS Office role with Gdocs.
- nicce 5y ago
  Does it? It requires internet connection and sends all company data for third party. Smooth perfomance is locked for using Chrome browser.
- quartesixte 5y ago
  Excel rules the corporate world. And to a certain extent, Outlook. But that’s mostly due to sheer inertia.
- option_greek 5y ago
  It would and to certain extent it does especially with startups etc. Where they dropped the ball is not being serious about the enterprise support. There are other reasons as well like attaching Google's name to the product there by making it non-serious (as in free/personal vs enterprisey/serious) due to Gmail being associated with personal email. If they are serious they should have gone with a separate brand with competent support. Despite all the above reasons, the main reason for the current zero competition is because for all enterprises,using azure AD is a natural progression from their much abused on-prem AD which has been linked as the primary mechanism for user auth across all kinds of products (MS and non MS). To be honest, MS doesn't have to do anything now. Just sit back and collect the money (and once in a while acquire things that have potential to become enterprisey like the GitHub).
- flatiron 5y ago
  Have you ever worked at a company that didn’t use office? I haven’t.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    Where I work, Office is being used less & less in favor of Google docs, so I'm not sure what the future holds. MS bundling OS/Office licenses more agressively I'm guessing will be one factor. As a side note, this increased use of Docs is unfortunately out of sync with security policy where I work. Certain types of data are only allowed to be shared through an encrypted portal that auto-deletes the file... Unless you put that data in a Google Sheet and hit the "share" button.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  Google bounces incoming mail on mailboxes that are locked for "suspicious" activity or logins. I've had it happen a few times as a result of a false positive and it's horrible. It's obvious no one at Google ever sits down and asks "will this be good for our users?" I have a free 50 user legacy account with Google Workspace and I only use it for personal stuff. I don't trust it for business.

bogwog 5y ago

> How did they achieve that in your opinion? Because the FTC is asleep at the wheel.

chasil 5y ago

Microsoft has never had a primary focus on retail consumers. The tools available on enterprise Windows platforms are vast compared to what an individual user can control on their standalone machine. These intrusive new Edge features have not appeared on my corporate desktop that is joined to Active Directory, and they likely never will. For individual consumers that prefer Chrome, it is likely time to install and learn a new operating system. Google could take some action to stop this. There could be a legal approach involving antitrust, but Google has its own problems with that issue at the moment, and action would likely have to be coordinated with Mozilla. Alternately, Google could force technologies into Chromium that compromise Microsoft, but are not sufficiently hostile to prompt a fork. I have thought that a tight binding of Go into Chromium, similar to Mozilla's actions with Rust, might make the entire market rethink C# and the .NET CLR. Kotlin can also be deployed at the JavaScript layer, and that would be an interesting platform to force-feed to Edge. Google has likely already had extensive internal discussions on transforming Chromium into a poison pill for Windows.