For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation

I don't know that anything Apple is doing is that revolutionary, the difference is that Apple and Jobs are <i>phenomenal</i> at presenting the idea so that people actually <i>get</i> it.<p>I'm sure there are a lot of Microsoft execs right now that are saying "we already do that with product X" and pretty pissed off that they were never able to sell product X over 5 years the way Apple did in an hour.<p>The bottom line is that Apple knows how to sell products to consumers, and Microsoft doesn't. Microsoft and Google both suffer from the same disease, they try to sell a product, not address a need. They might be the same thing in the end, and Microsoft might have even gotten there first, but Apple really <i>gets</i> marketing.

Microsoft killed their own brand.<p>Through their own efforts, Microsoft means Office, which means corporate. Unsurprisingly, their best consumer success is only tangentially associated with their name. "Microsoft Xbox" sounds like "Accounting Bouncy-house" to most people. There's a little bit of a dissonance when you remember that, yeah, Microsoft made this game system.<p>Even Windows, which is used by a majority of consumers today, feels like using a work tool at home, rather than something more personal. The way it communicates with you is like a colleague, not a friend. There are features that are the same as equivalent features on other operating systems, sometimes better, sometimes worse. But they are designed to make you "more productive", not to help you. Even when the mechanism is the same, it feels off as a personal device...<p>So, it's unsurprising that M advertises the Cloud heavily and it just feels like a "team-building" video, whereas A takes advantage of M's "to the cloud" ads building awareness to do a small press push and a brief description in a presentation and it's perceived as the second-coming.<p>And here's the thing, the "to the cloud" idea as marketing is a great idea! It's funny, and totally memorable -- but the Microsoft brand just kills it dead.

I have to agree with the Chronicle's basic point which is that Microsoft has talked about "cloud computing" for a long time and not delivered anything. Even a bad anything.<p>Its a very good example of the Innovator's Dilemma [1] in action, you've got some smart folks who see a future problem, and start creating interesting technology and vision around that problem, and then the reality that the company doesn't "need" it now gets in the way of pushing it from concept into the product stream. So it never gets to the 'commit' point where everyone is on board with shipping it to customers and trying to support it.<p>Why? Because that is "risky" but just tweaking the current product stream and adding a few features or targeting an adjacent market is much lower "risk."<p>As Clayton points out in his book innovation always loses in the 'risk' evaluation. So companies that are 'managed' always strive for optimum returns, and since you can't predict the future they are risk averse. Companies that are 'lead' on the other hand have the capability to ignore the risk in order to get to the rewards on the other side.<p>Startups have the risk meter pegged so it doesn't enter into their management decisions, instead they are focussed on execution and they flame out or succeed as they will and when they succeed they clarify the risk around their idea (if it flops the managers can pat themselves on the back for avoiding that land mine, if it takes off the managers wring their hands and wonder if they should have been able to forecast that success.<p>I think Apple may have combined some protocols and services into a useful adjunct to their product strategy. We won't really know until later when we see how it fairs. From the presentations and markitecture that Microsoft has espoused it seems like they could have done something similar but they didn't. It does reflect badly on how they are being managed, and that buck does stop at Ballmer. So it will be interesting to see how this affects his future there.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060521996" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060521996</a>

Does anyone else feel like the cheers of success for iCloud are a little premature? It's amazing that since it's Apple we automatically believe the "No, really I mean it this time!". Shouldn't previous performance be taken into consideration (.Mac, MobileMe)? Boy who cries cloud?<p>Until iCloud is launched (not til the <i>fall</i>), all we have is old broken promises, vapourware, and some very expensive data centres.<p>I want iCloud to live up to the hype as much as anyone. But at this point the only thing we should be calling a success is the awesome power of the Jobs Distortion Field. He's the tech equivalent of a superstar athlete in their prime and the top of their game - evidenced by articles like these.

The problem for Microsoft is that they continue to serve two masters: consumer users and corporate users. Corporate IT shops, especially within certain industries, can be exceptionally wary of anything that moves data outside their walls. Consumers are in general not nearly so picky. Corporations are MS's biggest customers and for years have had considerable influence on product direction. It's just not in Microsoft's DNA to ruffle the corporate customer feathers too much (whereas I get the sense Google and Apple almost take pleasure in it).<p>The biggest issue for MS isn't just that iCloud might be an embarrassment. It's a full on attack on the Windows monopoly. Apple telegraphed this in the WWDC presentation when they showed the stats on the numbers of people who don't own a personal computer (either Mac or Windows) in different countries around the world. The combination of iCloud + iPad means that the iPad can be a standalone device. This could potentially be huge in markets like China. How many SharePoint licenses does MS have to sell to make up for ceding a significant portion of the untapped Chinese PC market to the iPad?

You know, the funny thing is that as nerds we tend to look at iCloud and say, "well I can already do that with Dropbox and Amazon Cloud Player". It's not revolutionary to us.<p>Yet, can you imagine how many sales Apple will be able to take from Microsoft just by saying, "all your files are backed up and synced automatically between your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Mac devices." No more worrying about backups, losing your photos, or losing your music.<p>Up until now GeekSquad and other computer repair businesses made a killing just on moving files between machines when you replace them or recovering lost files.<p>Apple is getting this right because it helps them sell more devices. Microsoft is getting it wrong because it would cost them a lot and wouldn't sell more copies of Windows or Office.

Good god! Isn't it too early to prejudge iCloud? It will likely get a lot of users (it's mostly free and automatically integrated into their products after all), and it will likely succeed given mobility trends. But it is also too early to judge the future success or failure of Microsoft's cloud offering (though from what I'm seeing now, I guess it is likely to succeed as well).<p>At this point in time, Apple's success in the "software+cloud" model is the same as that of Microsoft (in that neither have seen mass wide adoption).<p>The use of "humiliation" in the title is an obvious exaggeration. But I guess without such title, that article wouldn't end up on the front page of HN.

Seems like this just is echoing Gruber from earlier this week:<p>"But Google’s vision is about software you run in a web browser. Apple’s is about native apps you run on devices. Apple is as committed to native apps — on the desktop, tablet, and handheld — as it has ever been."<p><a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/06/demoted" rel="nofollow">http://daringfireball.net/2011/06/demoted</a>

I was going to say something about this being flame bait, but I went back to MS's marketing material and it does seem like their vision marketing is at great odds from their execution: <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/softwareplusservices/software-plus-services-full-story.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.microsoft.com/softwareplusservices/software-plus-...</a><p>Unless by services they means software updates, CDDB updates, and downloading Office templates...

The only thing, as an Android user, I drool over is the ability of iCloud users to have their music "uploaded" for free (without transferring any data). I signed up for the Google Music beta, and 20 minutes later deleted my account. Why? It was going to take several weeks to upload my 60GB of music, during which time I wouldn't be able to seed my torrents as easily. And, saturating my upstream kills my downstream bandwidth.

Google is providing facsimiles of applications in the web browser, along with remote storage.<p>Apple is providing smart remote storage that works with local applications.<p>Browser apps are clunkier than web apps, at least for now and the immediate future, so Apple has the apparent edge.

I feel that if Microsoft had taken Bill Gates' book "The Road Ahead" and implemented a lot of the ideas in the book they could have preempted Apple and Google by several years! What's amazing to me is that the book is over 15 years old and just now a lot of what he mentioned in there with respect to the cloud is being implemented. Not by his company but Apple.

Yes, "the cloud" is a vision that Microsoft has proclaimed and never been able to implement. It really required re-thinking the operating system. Microsoft's operating system was just too big and unwieldy to be re-engineered in this way. If Apple truly has pulled it off, a large part of the reason is that their OS was much more malleable and could handle this kind of thing.<p>But I think iCloud is more than "annoying" to Google. It shows Apple is competing with them head-to-head for cloud customers. And if there are network effects and permanent lock-in, then this is a very, very important battle.<p>Google really has written an operating system where you can take your data and configuration with you wherever you go. But you have to switch to a new computer and operating system and a completely different way of thinking!<p>Apple hasn't truly re-written the operating system the way Google has. They have made some important strides to helping people get their most important data into the cloud. Then they announce iCloud, over-hype it, and hope that the reality distortion field does the rest.<p>The big advantage that iCloud has, though, is Apple can leverage their entire installed user base. Millions of people can begin to use iCloud NOW, for $29! That's orders of magnitude simpler than having to buy a new computer. It's not a complete cloud solution like ChromeOS, but it might be good enough for now. And with Apple, the transition will be gradual and the learning curve will be easy.<p>So I think Google should be very worried about iCloud...

Microsoft makes money from the desktop. The cloud threatens this, the current incarnation of the internet.<p>Over 10 years ago, the internet was supposed to undermine Microsoft, lead by Java. There was even a set-top box, that downloaded everything from the network (sound familiar?)<p>There was a joke about Java's ideal "write once, run everywhere", as "write once, debug everywhere". A similar joke about network-based computing's ideal of "access anywhere" is "no access anywhere". It's interesting that Apple's approach is <i>not</i> network centric.<p><pre><code> 1. The network is reliable. 2. Latency is zero. 3. Bandwidth is infinite. 4. The network is secure. 5. Topology doesn't change. 6. There is one administrator. 7. Transport cost is zero. 8. The network is homogeneous. </code></pre> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Computing" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Comput...</a><p>Of course, Java has basically achieved its aim. And, one day, the network will be good enough - when it's as reliable as the bus in your PC (or, more accurately, as reliably as it needs to be for specific tasks).

&#62;&#62; <i>All of the cloud computing services Google offers to consumers, like email, word processing and spreadsheets, happen within the browser.</i><p>Factually, this is incorrect. All of the services are <i>available</i> within the browser, but there have been native mobile apps available for gmail/docs/calendar for quite some time now.

the word cloud appears 43 times on that page ... Larry Ellisons rant (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOEFXaWHpp" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOEFXaWHpp</a>) is more apt then ever.

Microsoft does poor advertising. Office 2011 has a pretty sick cloud integration although you need to be running windows to use it properly. <a href="http://explore.live.com/windows-live-skydrive" rel="nofollow">http://explore.live.com/windows-live-skydrive</a> Skydrive. And Office 365 is even further along apparently although I am not a Beta user. I would argue M$FT is ahead of both apple and google, if you run windows and have a win7 phone your integration is pretty insane at this point, toss in an xbox + live and everything is integrated really well. It's just not so cool to talk M$FT as it isn't as shiny. I have a Mac now and have for 6 years, for the 4 years before that I went to a high school with all macs, just trying to point out I am not biased. People just seem to want to love apple and hate msft and as a user of both I don't get why other than "apple's cool."<p>On a similar note, many people buy macs because they "don't have viruses" which has to do with market share not that they aren't vulnerable as we all know. Am I the only one who believes the Mac App Store is just the beginning of them closing off the system so that in the case they reach a substantial market share they can avoid virus control by making sure you download directly from them? If M$FT told dev's you can only put software on our machines if you give us 30% ppl would go nuts.<p>Just saying, the fanboyism keeps many users from being critical, in the end they are a company, question every move they make as with google and M$FT.

Microsoft have released some great products in the last few years; Xbox and Windows Phone are a couple. Xbox has obviously done extremely well and WP is only going to grow with their partnership with Nokia. Correct me if I'm wrong, but these were both the result of starting from scratch with a smaller, more agile team who have permission to do something different and new. This works; even for Microsoft.<p>I also feel that maybe similar to Marco Arment's comments on the benefits of the new features in iOS on Instapaper, this may be the case for MSFT. If Apple can pave the way to making consumers' understand or at least appreciate what the cloud can do for them, then Microsoft and Google and others will have an easier time talking about their products. Before the iPhone came out, people couldn't see why and didn't want a "smartphone". Now everyone wants one, whether it's an iPhone or Android (and in the next few years Microsoft).<p>Microsoft does have some great products in this sphere I believe, Mesh and Skydrive being two. I haven't used either, but from what I've heard they do have some great potential. If off the back of Apple's announcement they can make them look good and continue developing on them, they will be able to sell it, even if its just by saying its the same as iCloud, but made by us. Apple does have a reputation of creating beautiful, easy to use products, but they are also seen as expensive and sometimes unneccessary. Android has taken off by being an alternative - Microsoft have the potential to be that alternative to iCloud. They have the pieces and experience shows MSFT does much better when they are the underdogs (Xbox and WP).<p>Just my two cents.

Microsoft had a shot at this with Hailstorm[1], it's too bad that it was killed.[2]<p>[1] <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(v=vs.85).aspx" rel="nofollow">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263932(v=vs.85).as...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/11/business/technology-microsoft-has-quietly-shelved-its-internet-persona-service.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/11/business/technology-micros...</a>

This reminds me of when Microsoft was hyping touch user interface features in the run-up to the Windows 7 launch (without anything tangible in the field). Then Apple released multi-touch gesture pads on their laptops and furthered the reach of iOS.

Ubuntu One, while not possessed of all the bells and whistles that Apple likes to hang on things, has already been hard at work in the cloud.

I would be that guy who says "Who on a non-Mac platform would bother using this?" but then six months down the line we'll find out that Apple has some secret plan to port it and appeal to Windows-using iPhone/iPad owners and boy my face would be red.

My girlfriend's first reaction to "iCloud" was "Is Mobile Me free now?". Its indeed fascinating to watch , a branding exercise &#38; marketing effort doing it's job with the media &#38; the bloggers to sell an under used platform with a bad rep.

I think iCloud will be great for Microsoft, they are including vista and windows 7 in icloud. I know lots of people with PCs and iphones/ipads.

Google <i>is</i> the "cloud".<p>Apple gives the "cloud" branding and a logo.

MS has been humiliated by Apple for over a decade now. Bill Gates wrote an entire book about the home of the future. And how digital devices would rule it. Who came across and actually did that? iPod, iPhone, iPad and the AppleTV are all very successful and the "digital hub" is basically the same thing that MS has been saying.<p>MS has been doing a lot of catch-up "also-ran" devices trying to do what Apple has done. It's unfortunate that they could never leverage their huge lead to make it happen.

Microsoft has a marketing problem, they have a lot of cloud services like Skydrive, Live Mesh etc. but are not able to grab the attention of consumers or media like Jobs is able to, on stage.<p>However, Windows 8 seems to be coming with a ton of integrated cloud features so I don't know about the humiliation part.I just don't see that their marketshare is affected more than 1% specifically due to the cloud services in Lion.