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May 16, 2006
Men In Black go to the GYM
Two or three years ago Microsoft, IBM, and BEA (MIB) were all the rage in the software world when the frenzy of web services and "SOAs" seemed to reach its peak. During those days the MIB were pumping out specs at an unprecendented rate and created a lot of buzz among developers. It is interesting how there has been a tectonic shift since then so that the GYM players (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft) seem to be getting most of the [large company] attention.
There are a few interesting observations about this:
1) IBM and BEA are not in danger of going out of business, but they aren't interesting anymore. Web services, yawn, fulfill a useful purpose in the enterprise, but don't really capture many (any? :-) people's imagination these days.
2) Microsoft always finds a way to stay in the game; and despite losing some talent to Google, they have retained and recruited engineering talent
3) It is ironic that in each acronym that the players are listed in descending order in terms of strength in the market. Microsoft was clearly the leader during the brief web services era, with IBM and BEA playing respective supporting roles. In the new "Web 2.0" world, Google seems to be leading with Yahoo running a close second and MS also staying close to the pack.
4) GOOG
Posted by harris at May 16, 2006 09:18 PM
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