Xbox 360 will prevail again this Christmas IMO!

[Kantor]

DirtyP2002 said:

Kantor said:

seece said:
I think you need to keep in mind though Kantor, that Microsoft are a bunch of loons, I'm starting to wonder if a big fanboy is running Microsoft Xbox HQ

They will do anything to win!

Lol, that's Microsoft in general. They try and buy out or destroy their competitors, and if that doesn't work, they lie back for a while, then make a new product and try again.

Examples of their failed attempts to get rid of rivals are the original Xbox (with the PS2), MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search (which all got owned by Google) and Internet Explorer (which is rapidly losing marketshare to Firefox, though Microsoft still have a majority so they're not going to bother with Bing Explorer or IE 360 or whatever )

When it comes to search engines, MS is the challenger. Google is a very strong brand, but MS and Yahoo try to give google some competition. I don't think, this is a bad thing. I really like Bing, but I do like google as well. 

The Windows Live Messenger is the best on the market and the Xbox360 (especially Xbox Live) is a success so far.

The Internet Explorer is by far the most used browser in the world.

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It is just wrong to say "MS goes in and tries to destroy the competitors." MS is running a business, not a fanboy war. They want to make some money, like everybody else. They see some interesting markets (gaming / Instant Messenger / Search engines) and they jump in. Did they buy anybody to do so? No. They created a product and participated. They have the ressources to do so and they are doing it. They did not buy one single competitor and did not destroy the competition.

With very few exceptions, Google has more than 50% marketshare in every country. In some countries it has as much as 90%. It is undoubtedly the most commonly used search engine in the world, and indeed the most popular website.

I find Bing absolutely useless. A Google search for a large website will reveal a search bar and sub-links for that website- Bing only has the usual title and summary. Everything Bing can do, Google can do. Yahoo is a pretty good search engine, but I find nothing comes close to Google in terms of number of results, relevance of results, and different search options.

Windows Live Messenger is the best, I agree (though the entire VGC staff with their AIM would probably disagree), I'll give you that.

Internet Explorer is the most used browser in the world, but it's not the best, and it's got nowhere near the dominance of, say, Windows OS (also my personal favourite). As of February this year, IE had just over 65% marketshare ( http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/02/02/internet-explorer-market-share-falling-like-a-ton-of-bricks/ ) and as the article name suggests, the marketshare is falling- down  2% from the previous month, and a good 12-13%, looking at that graph, from the previous year.

MS does try to destroy the competition. They're willing to bleed any amount of money to do it, because they know that once you have a monopoly, it's very hard for anyone else to steal it, and because they have no real shortage of money. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's just what they do. Some would question it, but all's fair in love and war, if you're not breaking any laws, and Microsoft aren't. Very rarely do they settle for second place. They did this gen, because they saw it was unwinnable. Next gen, with their Natal technology, I can guarantee you they will be willing to spend any amount of money to get the NextBox in first place. But sometimes money can't buy you success.