Anxiety behind Microsoft's merger and acquisition of Yahoo: Web has become the grave of the software industry

With the emergence of Gtalk, online file processing software, and other Internet products, Google made us more clear 1 point, the original website can do the same thing with the software.

You said Gtalk and Tradelink (aliwangwang)/MSN/y! Does mesenger have any functional differences? No. the difference is that its carrier has changed, the channel has changed, and the implementation cost has changed. their functions/functions are the same. in the past, we had to go to the audio and video store to purchase a CD to achieve our own song listening needs. Now we only need to use the Internet. The CD is a software carrier and its main content is software, A website that provides the song search and download services is also a software. They also help us to find songs and listen to songs, and implement the playing function. Therefore, web products/websites are the same as those for us. They are essentially software.

Microsoft, the big guy in the software industry, also saw this point. He had a hunch that if he didn't embrace this change, he would encounter the fate of a similar abandon: Just like the current singing industry, obtain your alimony by legal means.

The real process of this fate is far beyond their imagination-from the perspective of Google's development trend, the web industry is no longer satisfied with the separation of data with the traditional software industry, google constantly launches various free Web products, some of which have intruded into the sphere of force of Microsoft's current strong products. I believe that the software industry similar to Microsoft has gradually seen that at the product level: Web products/websites = Web software, the web industry is doing exactly the same thing as the traditional software industry. in a sense, the web industry is playing the role of the tomb of the traditional software industry. from this perspective, it is not difficult for us to understand the deep anxiety behind Microsoft's recent merger and acquisition of Yahoo.

Compared with traditional software, Web software has several advantages that traditional software cannot be reversed or replaced:

1) The free product model subverts the traditional paid product model.

Free is a feature of Web software, but not all users are free of charge. free is just a strategy for Web software targeting buyers. taking Google search as an example, the buyers here are the information find parties. They are free of charge, but they pay for the information provider, the so-called seller. both parties have different requirements. google search makes profits by selling advertisements, solving the commercial value of the product.

2) The online Loading Mode subverts the one-time installation mode.

The more powerful the software is, the higher our hardware expenditure. software and Hardware vendors are two major consortium of interests that are inseparable from the entire high-tech industry chain. different from the software installation mode, website products have two requirements on users' hardware: Display and network capabilities. hard drive/Optical Drive... this change will not make hardware manufacturers so disgusted that they can adapt to the trend to produce hardware that matches website products.

3) separated client and background processing programs

In terms of user experience, installing software is risky for common users. in the real world, many products require professional personnel to provide installation services, such as air conditioners, such as home decoration line cabling, the software industry has not solved the problem of product installation, but has pushed the problem to the user. The subsequent problems include upgrading and updating (no additional upgrade fee ). web products solve this problem by separating the client and background programs. In addition, website product updates and upgrades only need to be reloaded to the client (which is invisible to users ), the update of the website's frontend and backend programs becomes a task that requires no user involvement in decision-making. users are unaware of the upgraded products and services.

With these advantages, we can hardly predict the final people in this industrial revolution. at the same time, as a web practitioner, there is a problem that needs to be well solved, that is, low development and implementation costs lead to the randomness of Web product decision-making. this is becoming a common problem in the industry. Many companies take advantage of it. before continuing to do this, consider the user's feelings: Who would like to be the subject of an immature web product? Scientists try experiments with mice out of respect for people. Treating users as experimental objects without respect for users does not bring about user satisfaction with products, so they do not need to talk about user loyalty. user loyalty is the foundation for the survival and development of all enterprises in the business field. business decision makers in the web industry should never ignore this point.