Microsoft Windows: more than operating system

Windows, less of momentum to keep on going?

The progress of Windows seems have been slowed down in recent years. I had once asked myself, should I upgrade the installed Windows XP in my laptop to Windows Vista? At last, I decided to wait for a while because I could not see any emergency of the upgrade. Now it seems that this decision might be smart. Many users do not like Vista and they would rather stay with the old Windows XP even for their new computers.

Besides this Vista story, another thread to Windows is from a competitor of Microsoft---Apple. The increasing influence of the Mac operating system has been gradually severe to Microsoft. When the technology of operating system on PCs is becoming more and more mature now, adopting Mac instead of Windows becomes a more and more persuasive excuse especially when the UI design of Mac is generally thought prettier than that of Windows.

Do Microsoft engineers suddenly lose their mind to create this unsatisfactory Vista product? Or are Apple engineers becoming much smarter to compete to Microsoft? Actually, none of the answers are true. The truth is that any further improvement of OS on PC has become so difficult and there are so few rooms to grow on advanced OS technologies on PC that the version-upgrading strategy executed by Microsoft for years may come to its end if no major change of action would been made. We are actually not complaining about how bad Vista is (maybe Vista does have some problems, but they are not the core reason of the slide since every new Microsoft Windows release has bugs). In fact, the real complain is that Vista is not so innovative to be a new version. Hence if some of us do expect to have a new experience of operating system, switch to Mac becomes a better option than upgrade to Vista. This is thus the problem.

Windows, more than an operating system!

To save Windows from collapsing, buying Yahoo might not the only option. As we have discussed, a key challenge is whether we can figure out new fields for Windows to explore beyond its traditional realm of operating system. The answer is yes.

We all know that Windows means operating system with respect to a personal computer. But there is a question: will Windows mean something more when the PC is linked to World Wide Web? Few people may have carefully thought of this question. But it is indeed a crucial question Microsoft may need to think.

About Windows and World Wide Web, here are several statements.

1. Windows was born when the Web was infant.
2. Windows is not designed for the Web.
3. Windows is an operating system for PCs but it is not a Web operating system.
4. There is no Web operating system existed so far and probably there should never been a Web operating system ever.

Beyond these statements it still leaves an open question: what does Windows mean when it is connected to the Web (even though Windows is not designed for the Web)?

To answer this question, we should first look at what a PC is when linked to the Web. When a PC is linked to the Web, it automatically becomes part of the Web. Or more precisely, the storage space of the PC becomes a small portion of the gigantic space of the Web. When Windows manages the space on the PC, the Windows automatically becomes a web-resource operating mechanism (WebROM) in the respective local environment. This recognition is the basis of our following discussions.

Moreover, when a PC is linked to the Web, not only that its space becomes part of the Web, but also that the user activities on the Web result in a local topology of the Web on the PC. If we connect all the Web nodes navigated by the users on a PC, we can obtain a specific topology of a portion of the Web of interest on this PC. Therefore, it is not only that a PC is on the Web, but also that the Web is in a PC. By this recognition, the operating system on a PC (such as Windows) becomes a WebROM of not only the local PC resources but also all the Web resources indexed by the local topology of the Web.

This last recognition does not, however, suggest that Windows might become a Web OS. As I discussed in an earlier post, being a WebROM is fundamentally different from being a WebOS. What Windows would manage is only a topology of a small portion of the entire Web. In any circumstance, such a topology is consistently a closed world in contrast to that the Web as a whole is always an open world. I do not believe in generic Web OS.

Live Search, bring a new life for Windows?

If Microsoft decides to make Windows be not only a PC OS but also a WebROM, one Microsoft product may gradually become a central piece of the new Windows. It is the Live Search.

A central role of Web resource operating is search. Unlike the PC local resources over which specific PC users can have fully control, no individual PC user has the right to control over Web resources in general. By contrast, PC users have the right to SEARCH all the available Web resources though they cannot control them. Hence the search operation is the primary operation in WebROM (in comparison, "search" is just one of the major operations in OS).

Up to the date, Live Search at Microsoft follows a successful route that both Yahoo and Google have experienced. That is, Microsoft is trying to design a centralized generic search engine that is supposed to have indexed the entire Web for users to search. There is nothing wrong with this strategy. Yahoo succeeds with it, and so does Google. But the problem is that this strategy makes Microsoft forgot its unbeatable weapon that neither Yahoo nor Google has. The weapon is Windows. Without this weapon, Microsoft was only "a three-year-old kid comparing to the 12-year-old big boy Google" on Web search, once said by Mr. Ballmer. But what may happen if the three-year-old kid picks up this WMD (weapon of mass destruction) on hand? Google will be really afraid.

In parallel, Microsoft may want to plan an alternative search strategy that may be part of its new Windows. In my mind, this search strategy should be a decentralized mechanism that can maximize the aggregation of individual user experiences. Based on the installed Windows OS on PCs and the registered network of all Windows users, Microsoft can develop a brand new social-search-type strategy that prompts its Live Search and saves its Windows at the same time. As a side effect, this new strategy will put Live Search to the center of the new Microsoft Windows.

This post has already been too long and thus I have to omit more discussion of the specific strategy in my mind. I may consider to start another post specific to this topic later. Moreover, I will share more details of my thoughts with Microsoft Live Search scientists and engineers next week at Redmond. Several of my previous posts at this blog as well as at Semantic Focus have already expressed the general ideas of my thoughts. For the readers who are interested in the topic, please type in "Yihong Ding" and "semantic search" in any of the three major search engines and you will find them.

More about the Yahoo Deal

As the final address, I would like to say a little bit more about the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. In an earlier post, I only briefly emphasized that the deal may hurt the Live Search in a long run. But certainly there are more important reasons for Microsoft to be in this action.

Microsoft wants to jump into the market of online advertisement and buying Yahoo may be the fastest way to get into it and obtain a decent percentage of market share immediately. Unquestionably both of the motivation and projection are reasonably right for Microsoft to take this action. The problem is that whether it is really the best option, let it alone the only option, on the table, as some analysts have argued. I think it is not.

Microsoft has its own crowd that may be more than the crowd of Yahoo, i.e., the crowd of Windows users. If Microsoft can bind Live Search into Windows (see my short explanation underneath), the population of Windows users will automatically be inherited by its search. Moreover, the new distributional Web search strategy will help Microsoft build social communities among the Windows users. Let Windows sit in the middle and play a new role on the new-age Web will be a much better choice for Microsoft to occupy the realm of online advertisement. Buying Yahoo may simply cost Microsoft too much and it will eventually hurt the core of Microsoft---the Windows.

(The binding of Live Search and Windows I suggested is not enforcing all the search flow to live.com by Windows. Otherwise Microsoft must get sued immediately by Google. The binding is about re-interpreting Windows to be a software of WebROM and thus Web search becomes a basic function such as creating a local file in Windows in contrast to a separated, external service. In particular, within Windows Microsoft may even allow Google to be the default search engine so that all the search flow goes to google.com instead of live.com. Even with this option, Microsoft may still gain the biggest share on online advertisement because Windows then becomes the default platform of search and the default central Web resource management tool. Windows becomes the brain of the Web.)