Well the title is laughable, we all know who wins this event, but have we ever wondered why? Yeah of course Google has the internet as its base and is becoming a threat even to the Redmond giant whose focus is barely the internet until recently. The new OS chrome will change the face of the OS industry; bringing cloud computing to home users is a radical concept. This radical concept is that it appeals to the masses (me). Cloud computing at home user level enables a user to use any computer with a Google chrome OS but have all their personal files and settings even their own themes and user accounts downloaded to that machine. Now that’d be cool.
Ever wondered why the Americans go for the Mac and why the rest of the world laughs at them? It’s because of the “it just works” tag they give out and live up to it. The PC is flexible and fun, you can have all the software you need and install it without having to contact any store online and the unique thing about a PC is that it can be fun and usable without having an internet connection, that is to say that without an internet connection the Mac would become totally useless piece of junk while the pc can still be used for many purposes.
But at present most Google products go unchallenged and rise far above the competition that most people forgot that yahoo has a search engine too. Many other Google products also receive the same amount of attention and market share as Google search, some of them are:
Google maps
YouTube and Google videos
Picasa
AdSense and other ad products
Blogger
Docs
Gmail
Calendar
Google Desktop
iGoogle
Orkut
Chrome Web browser based on Webkit
Even though we haven’t heard of any rivals to most of these, they are not unique solutions. They’re the most sought after so that we can deem them to be unique. Among the top solutions above, AdSense has no rival which is as big as Google. Blogger dominates the blogging users with its simple interface and easy to use templates. Google desktop is an implementation of web search in a PC however this was rendered useless by the windows indexing feature which does the same and also after windows vista they incorporated the search feature in the start menu as the default first option in it. Google calendar, Docs, Picasa web albums are the first bread crumb trail for cloud computing storing the user’s documents, pictures and schedules while Gmail holds the contact information.
The products which have real competition are search, maps, Picasa web albums, Orkut and chrome web-browser.
Search has had the more rivalry in the history of internet than any other field. Google competitors here are Bing from Redmond giant Microsoft, Yahoo. Though the actual rivalry as of now can be seen between Bing and Google, they both are lite and fast, Bing has some additional feature of having small pop-up extra info about each search entry. Bing is new and is taking the Google fans by storm. Bing was introduced in June, 2009 and Yahoo! Search In 2004.
Clearly Yahoo has lost here and is very obvious. But you have to ignore this quote because it has no meaning:
“As of January 2010, Bing is the third largest search engine on the web by query volume, at 3.16%, after its competitor Google at 85.35% and Yahoo at 6.15%, according to Net Applications”
Yahoo throws almost all the above Google’s products and much more too. But still yahoo is held in low esteem. We’ll do a direct face-off between competitive products in the market along with other companies if any.
Face-off
Mail: Gmail Vs Yahoo! Mail Vs Hotmail
Gmail rules the roost but can anyone justify that? I don’t think so because Microsoft offers hotmail/live to be just as streamlined and simple as Gmail interface, actually they’re almost the same in terms of looks and functionality.
Yahoo! is way ahead in this race. It was the first one to introduce mail to the world in 1997 and Google introduced Gmail only in 2004. Yahoo! Mail interface rocks! It’s superb, streamlined, skinned, tabbed interface, multiple pans for reading whilst browsing, etc., and still yahoo mail is hated for its heavy interface and it just won’t work properly on a slower connection.
Here’s the inbox look of the mail clients:
Gmail:
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Yahoo! Mail:
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Hotmail:
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Still think Google rules the roost?
Gtalk Vs Yahoo! Messenger Vs MSN messenger
This is a battle that had been already won. Look above! If people like Gmail, they can only use and will be wise and efficient to use only gtalk. If Managing two e-mail accounts are hectic then think about managing two IM clients and separate friend lists.
So we can conclude based on what people want: simple unobtrusive and a great chat experience or its apt to say chat client.
We’ll see what gtalk offers:
Gtalk is very small and lite takes up about zero system resources and also it doesn’t bother you with slow loading and ads. It has a video chat plug-in and a built in voice chat facility. The chat window is simple or to say very much empty and neat. The smiley’s are boring and are hard to use. There’s custom status message display which also include an option to display the track currently being played by WMP or iTunes but it doesn’t work on most cases so it’s more of a gimmick than an actual feature. Nothing more is there with gtalk.
Screenshots:
Main Window:
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Chat window:
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Yahoo! Messenger
Yahoo! messenger is a full fledged IM Client and I’ll take a whole afternoon for its features, so I’ll just make a list rather than sentences, it’s hard to type you know:
Skin able interface
Chat rooms
Messenger Insider window of goodies
Easy smiley and there’s a large collection
Talking heads with one liners sending capabilities(audibles and emoticons)
Playing on the background like doodle, etc.,
Voice chats
Invisible mode
Custom status message
Buzz feature
Picture sharing
Custom plugins
Chat window backgrounds and themes
Live account chatting*
These are the features which come to the top of my mind when I think about Yahoo! Messenger and I suspect there are many more, as I too fell in love with Google and haven’t been using yahoo messenger for about a year.
Screenshots:
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MSN Messenger
Almost nobody uses this IM so I’m not gonna talk about it. Yeah right I’m kidding, MSN messenger kills the competition by its well integrated IM solution which is a part of the windows Live Essentials package and is available as a very small download. MSN is great looking, very easy to use and has a feature set that is a super set of both gtalk and Yahoo with nothing missed.
Screenshots:
Thought of stealing the screenshots but they were so good that I had to try it.
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Google maps Vs Bing Maps Vs Yahoo Maps
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Google maps are synonymous with online road maps for quite a long time. Though yahoo maps is there Google maps is just superb and it’s more efficient and functional than Yahoo! Maps
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Oh! What is that? Hey! Look there! MS has got new Bing maps! Guess what, Bing Maps is awesome, shiny, functional effective and many people think it’s better than Google Maps and so Bing Maps is here to stay and this will eat up a significant share of Google maps and changes Yahoo! maps into late Yahoo! maps.
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| From A Different Land |
Ok guys, I hope MS makes things bit more easier for us to use and cheaper too, but the free stuff they give out is just as amazing as the ‘for-millionaire-only’ paid products. After windows 7 i fell in love with Microsoft..
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