Battle of the software giants

Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, is throwing one of the world’s biggest parties. The most famous software company in the world was founded in 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1986, it moved its HQ to Redmond in Washington. And now, it is celebrating its 35th birthday! We saw the release of Vista, a more secure version of Windows, as well as updated of the Office suite, which included Word and Excel. However, after years of dominating the software market, is the future as bright as the company would have us believe?

Competition is stronger than ever. Many users are changing their browsers – Mozilla Firefox is hailed as faster and more secure than Internet Explorer. Viruses are everywhere, and Microsoft now spends over 30% of its research and development budget on security issues. Skype’s software for free internet telephony has been successful – taking business away from Microsoft’s MSN messenger service. Skype have now attracted a takeover offer from e-Bay, the Internet auction site. Rival Apple’s iPod media player has damaged Microsoft’s plans for growing into the digital music world. Another competitor, Linux, produces ‘open source’ software, which its supporters argue is better, cheaper and more reliable than Microsoft’s products.

On the one hand Bill Gates describes an exciting future where different types of software products ‘converge’ so your digital world is with you everywhere – in the office, at home and on the road. Microsoft could be all around you! CEO Steve Ballmer talks about “winning” the Web, meaning beating Google and Yahoo! and other companies which have a core base on the Internet. On the other hand, critics paint a picture of slow product development, slow growth, pointing out that the launch of Longhorn, the successor to Windows XP, was delayed several times and then this product was renamed. So, will Microsoft continue to dominate the world of computers? Maybe its very size makes it more difficult to compete in the fast-moving technology market, with smaller companies driving innovation forward.

ASWER THE QUESTIONS: 1. What software do you use at work/at home/for study? 2. What kind of problems have you had recently, e.g. viruses? 3. Do you agree with Bill Gates that new products will ‘converge’? Why? 4. Do you think that Microsoft will continue to dominate the software market? 5. Do you think one company will ‘dominate the web’? If so, which one and why? 6. What Internet browsers do you know? 7. What are their advantages/disadvantages over others? 8. What do you think about Linux? 9. What are its advantages/disadvantages over Windows XP/ Vista? 10. Do you know other “open source” software?

Vocabulary exercises

Exercise 1. Give Russian equivalents: graphic chips, online-distribution, computing device, consumer electronics, motherboard chipset, network interface controller, integrated circuits, embedded product.

Exercise 2. Fill in the gap with a necessary word.

URL, web-based, upgrade, mail service, version,

web pages, e-mail providers, users, founder

Hotmail’s _____ Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia, another founder, came up with the business plan for the _____ he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters "HTML" – the markup language used to write _____. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing (верхний регистр заглавной, прописной буквы). At one time, if you clicked on Hotmail's 'mail' tab, you would have seen "HoTMaiL" in the ____. Hotmail was also one of the first free ___. It was subsequently (впоследствии) acquired by Microsoft in 1997 for an estimated $400 million, and shortly after it was rebranded as “MSN Hotmail”.

Nowadays Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free ____ email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group. The current ____, "Windows Live Hotmail", was officially announced in 2005 and released worldwide in 2007.

The new version was released on June 15, 2010 and is rolling out (развёртывать) to Hotmail's 360 million ____ (and new users) over the course of the following six weeks. The rollout (массовый выпуск) started with under 1% of people having the new Hotmail after almost 4 weeks. Microsoft has confirmed that the ______process will soon o speed up.

Exercise 3. Translate from English into Russian.

1. Adobe Systems Incorporated (1982) is an American computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. The company has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray towards rich Internet application software development. The company name Adobe comes from river Adobe Creek, which ran behind the house of one of the company's founders. 2. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, and software things include the Mac OS X operating system and the iTunes media browser. 3. Corel (1985) is an abbreviation of "Cowpland Research Laboratory", this company had great success early in the high-tech boom of the nineties with the product CorelDraw and became, for a time, the biggest software company in Canada. 4. eBay Inc.(1995) is an American Internet company that manages eBay.com, an on-line auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide. 5. The Mozilla Foundation (abbreviated MoFo, 1998) is a non-profit organisation that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. It coordinates releases of the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client. The most interesting fact about this company is that it claimed to be developing the Mozilla browser for testing purposes only, and not for use by end users.

Exercise 4. Write an annotation to this text.

Sales of e-books are growing. However, sales of e-books make up just a tiny per cent of the total book market. Sony want to change that. This month, the company launches its new reader in the US. It is about the size of a paperback book, 175.6 mm long, and 126.6 mm wide. The e-book Reader is portable, weighing just 250 grammes. The device uses E-ink and according to the manufacturer, offers a reading experience which is similar to reading on paper. The Reader recognises different file formats such as pdfs, and allows users to read blogs and play certain MP3 music files.

Is this really an innovative product? There have been several attempts by different companies to make e-books popular, and none have really been successful. In 2004 Sony launched a similar version in Japan. It failed. One reason was the high price. The big difference this time around is the number of e-books which have been made available to read. Sony has done deals with major publishers such as Penguin and HarperCollins to sell digital e-books via its Connect™ online store.

Is Sony attempting to follow the model of Apple’s iTunes by making thousands of books (that publishers have translated into Sony’s format) available through downloading? However, there are big differences between storing songs and books. Usually, we only read one book at any given time. Why would anyone wish to carry around the 80 books, which can be stored on each device? Perhaps the Reader will attract those users who do need regular access to huge manuals while on the move. Some business users may appreciate the chance to read pdfs.

Sony is making impressive claims for its product, but it is being criticised on Internet forums for continuing to believe that the public want this product. Perhaps the main reason e-books have never taken off is simple: many people prefer to read a book. So the big question is – will the Reader sell? With a current price of $350, the answer is far from sure.

Exercise 5. Translate from Russian into English.

1. Apache (1996) – это один из самых популярных веб-серверов, основными достоинствами которого считаются надёжность и гибкость конфигурации. Он позволяет подключать внешние модули для предоставления данных, модифицировать сообщения об ошибках и т. д., а недостатком наиболее часто называется отсутствие удобного стандартного интерфейса для администратора. 2. Compaq (1982) получила свое название от computer и paq (маленькая интегрированная деталь) и была крупнейшим поставщиком компьютеров в мире несколько лет, после того как начала производить недорогие IBM PC совместимые компьютеры. В 2002 произошло слияние (merge) копмании с HP. 3. Google название произошло от слова Googol, что означает единицу со 100 нулями. А Google было написано на чеке, который основатели этого проекта (среди которых, кстати, бывший россиянин - Сергей Брин) получили от первого инвестора и после этого они назвали поисковик именно так. 4. Xerox – это корпорация, основанная изобретателем Честором Карлсоном, который хотел, чтобы в названии было слово "сухой" (так как в то время существовало только влажно копирование). "Xer" - сухой по-гречески. 5. Слово “Yahoo” придумал Джонатан Свифт в книге "Путешествия Гулливера", так звали отталкивающего (repulsive in appearance) человека. Основатели "Yahoo!" Джери Янг (Jerry Yang) и Дэвид Фило (David Filo) выбрали это имя, потому что сами себя называли yahoo`ми. Однако, сейчас название расшифровывается как Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.