Yeah i agree too. One day google will probably be more powerful in the OS market than microsoft and with google os'es running on most pc's then more people will turn to them and the more money/resources they get then they can expand perhaps by making gaming consoles and games, making hardware and everything.
If they do that i think there is a verry good chance the google will overthrow microsoft, but i can't see it anytime soon. Probably in a few years we can start to see what google really can do.

-HellFire

I think you must see it from two sides:
Ok it is always bad when you experienced bad support, but it doesn't mark the end of MS.
(atleast not anytime soon)
MS is active in a lot of areas.
They are not restricted to desktop applications anymore.
But when it comes do desktop environments, MS is still the way to go.
For the casual user it's the best choice.
The handling is "smooth" and self explanatory.
Even elder people can get used to it, I don't think that these people would get used to Linux that quick ?!
Sure there's SUSE but it still lacks in desktop related things, though the installation routine is much better than any other distribution.
So I don't see a change in the desktop environment anytime soon.
As said for daily desktop use, MS is still the way to go

I have installed both, XP and SUSE on my notebook, before SUSE I had Kubuntu.
I'm a programmer so I was curios to what Linux has to offer.
So far I love it, but I wouldn't delete XP completely off my harddrive
Furthermore I have to work with some WIN only software and it's just not worth emulating everything with WINE.
That's another reason as to why MS will stay #1
Too many companies rely on WIN
But that's not bad aslong as everything can be achieved with no hassle

Still, it's a different thing if you want to use WIN for your daily desktop use or you want to run your server with WIN
I'm not experienced enough with server+MS to say something usefull about it so I will end this post

Microsof is pretty safe right now. They have a hold on the OS world and much of the application world as such. Google is just entering the application world. Microsoft has SO much money that they can practically buy their way into any arena. They can apply their money to beat any competition. Google is working on controlling the world's information, and Microsoft is focusing on personal computers.

Google's world is the internet, and Microsoft's world is the personal computer. If either one ventures into the other's domain, there will be total rejection. Sure, competition is great, but when a major company tries to impede on another major company's domain, the more established will prevail. We are seeing this with Microsoft's Live trying to compete with Google. Google is too well known and too trusted in the online world, that, until they mess up, they will dominate over Microsoft. As long as Microsoft keeps improving Windows and Office, they will dominate over any attempts by Google to steal into their market-share. We saw this with Novell's WordPerfect. Microsoft totally destroyed WordPerfect with their Microsoft Word. Microsoft is a trusted name in the office application world and OS world, and Google is a trusted name in the online search/services world.

it may be true, but remember other big companies such as IBM used to own a monopoly on PCs, look at it now, IBM technically isn't in the PC area anymore.

xboxrulz

So long as most every new PC ships with Windows and 90% of the population does not realize that it is not really the greatest OS on earth Microsoft will continue to dominate the OS market. Now factor in that most people use Windows at their job then how many people look at any OS and their first thought is what games can they play on it. On another board someone was actually so idiotic they stated that Unix was useless because you could not play games on it. That mindset has to be broken or re-educated for MS to lose their grasp.

Actually, a lot of Universities uses UNIX for education and not Windows and a lot of people go through university or college.

xboxrulz

That's true, but not completely. At the Leuven University they do use Linux (Kubuntu), but at the Antwerp Hogeschool, we still use WindowsXP as main OS (altough we folowed linux courses during one semester and we still have to use linux during the networking courses). The main problem is that some of the applications at school don't work on linux (like Matchad, Multisim, Visual Studio, ...) and that setting up an active directory for both windows and linux is too much of a hassle...