Asks the Advertisement that wants you to subscribe to their newsletter. The answer to that question is cloud computing. Now whether or not Bill is afraid is not of any concern to me, who cares. It's not like Bill is not going to be a billionaire tomorrow.
Anyway, cloud computing in a nut shell is using applications that are somewhere on the internet (the cloud) instead of running the same type of application on your home or business computer. I'm writing this article using blogger's software that is being run in my web browser. I could be doing the same thing on a MAC, or with a computer running Linux, this software doesn't care what my operating system is. The article is going to be saved on a server owned by google. I don't need to save anything on my personal computer.
Other "cloud computing" programs that I and many of you use are services like Yahoo mail or Gmail; Google docs is a whole office suite online. Documents can be shared and collaborated on by anyone who has prilages to do so. The last company I worked at used Google docs to share word processing and spreadsheet documents with employees and with customers. We were all able to update the documents collaboratively. And the cost was nothing.
So how could all of this theoretically scare Bill Gates? Well, when you consider that Windows costs hundreds of dollars, and Microsoft Office costs hundreds of dollars just on one PC, then you could imagine how much money a large company could save by simply not buying Microsoft products. Using online free products along with an operating system like Linux could save a company millions.
In my opinion Google has made a great effort to be at the forefront of cloud computing. This week I needed to share some very old documents with my extended family, I figured I needed a free an easy web site. Sure enough Google had that, Google sites provided me a free and easy way to whip out a web site so I could post my files so my extended family could have access to scanned in photos I wanted to share.
I have used Yahoo mail for over 10 years and it's always come through for me, I never use the email provided by my internet supplier because I never know if they will irritate me and I will move on. I have had several internet suppliers but my email is always there for me supplied by Yahoo. I also use my Yahoo calendar to keep me informed about birthdays and other important events. I personally prefer using Yahoo's email over Gmail but Gmail has something that Yahoo doesn't have for free and that's the ability to forward messages. I have several Gmail accounts and have them forward messages to my Yahoo email account.
Next time you go to Google click on More, then even more and you will be surprised at the cloud computing options being offered to you. Yahoo is my home page because I can check my Yahoo mail, Gmail, and Facebook accounts at a glace. All cloud computing applications. Oh and I use Wikipedia a lot for links in my articles another fine cloud computing effort.
Happy computing and I'll see you on the cloud!
Dan
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