Comments on: Microsoft Web plan takes aim at Google

Mirroring efforts at Google, Yahoo and elsewhere, software maker to offer developers tools to build online applications.

[Eggs Ackley]

More original ideas from Microsoft

Unfortunately, all their original ideas were *originally* someone else's.

[aabcdefghij987654321]

More original comments from the chorus

Unfortunately the chorus has been singing the same sorry theme for years on end and have lost all credability.

No where does the article imply that MS was presenting this as an "original" thought, to the contrary the gist is that MS is playing catch up by imitating it's competitors in this area.

But of course you can't see that just like you can't see the cases where MS has lead the pack with original ideas that others have had to copy because you've convinced yourself that because it's MS it must be copied. I'll leave it to you to find examples of MS originality because that's the only way you'll get over your mental problem.

[tsm26]

Companies are rarely the first

Google was hardly the first to implement web services APIs, and they just "copied" everyone with a new instant messenger. In the computer field using good ideas built by others is a great thing for the industry. Blizzard "copied" the gameplay of Command and Conquer and made it better. Why reinvent the wheel. That is what the whole open source movement is about. This is not a defence of Microsoft, since I am not excited about these APIs. I think Google does a better job on the web. I find it perfectly fine and even commendable however, that Microsoft is moving to giving these tools.

Will that work?

How many programmers that program for Microsoft products are there that will really volunteer their time to develop anything for free? The few products that I see being developed for free for Windows are (1) not the full version that you buy, (2) riddled with adware, (3) a trojan horse, (4) is some other malware, (5) will expire in so many days, (6) are partially disabled, (7) developed by a large company that wants more people to use that company's products (e.g. Java, Internet Explorer, Flash, Adobe Reader, etc.), or (8) are open source adaptations for Windows (there are very few of these, unless you compile them yourself--usually, the open source ones are developed primarily for some variant *nix, where there is already a large community of developers that volunteer time).