Microsoft, Google and the Future

 

Likewise, Microsoft's relationship with Google-which boils down to Microsoft's faltering attempts to catch Google in the online search and advertising game Google essentially created-might well be a blip on the screen when viewed through the lens of long-term R&D, Mundie said. 

Microsoft doesn't look at Google with the thought that it will fail and Microsoft will succeed, he said. Rather, it's a case of where the "big pots of gold" are. While online search and advertising is an important pot, and one that Microsoft is committed to pursuing, it's only one. Unlike Google, Microsoft has other pots to pursue, including databases and operating systems, Mundie said.

There's also the company's long-term desire to move beyond the current computing methods to a more intuitive, analytically aware system that enables computers to analyze human behavior and react accordingly, rather like having an assistant that sorts through one's mail each night. The other piece of that innovation, Mundie said, is having integrated content across a whole plethora of platforms, including mobile, desktop and other computing surfaces that will emerge from Microsoft.

Those changes in computing will come about starting in 2010 to 2011, spurred mainly through the "radical rearchitecting" of the microprocessor, he said, adding that this shift will, for the first time, afford a change in the programming model as well as an interesting challenge.

"If I said we are going to make Word, Excel and PowerPoint 100 times faster, would you care? Probably not, unless we qualitatively changed what those things did or how you interface," Mundie said. "I think these computing changes-assuming we master them, and I am quite confident we will-will really create a whole new cycle and concept of applications that support people. I think we've become comfortable with computing as we've coded it and as we've known it and it's going to change quite dramatically."