oldpueblo
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Google docs for consumers is free as Office online for consumers is also free.
Google apps for business is paid as Office 365 is also paid.
https://www.google.com/work/apps/business/pricing.html
How much does Microsoft charge for Windows Phone and full Windows in small tablets? Nothing?
Microsoft and Google are similar.
(Those photoshops could be better.)
Still not the same, at all. Here's context. Microsoft's products were once not free and have only been made semi-free due to industry trends. They are fighting to stay relevant and useful, AND be the go-to company for cross platform support. Google however went the opposite direction, luring people in with promises of cool free stuff and THEN creating paid for products after they were able to hook enough people, and make enough money off of people's data, wait I mean cool free stuff! They started as just search, nothing else. Search getting slowly more invasive the larger they grew. Don't be evil turned into be evil all the time basically. The two companies could not be any more different, it's like saying a guy that killed someone to steal his things and a person that shot someone in self defense are both murderers. Context and intent matter. The end result is similar, but the reasons/scenario are not at all. Here's a great read relevant to this topic.
Microsoft Is The New Google, Google Is The Old Microsoft - Forbes
How are Microsoft's once-paid now-free services funded? Office online, virtually unlimited OneDrive, Windows for devices <9" for example? Isn't there even an HP Stream 7 w/ads? Windows is also much lower cost than it used to be, and upgrades are now mostly free. How are they covering the costs?
Two thoughts on this. They are eating the costs making a bet on the long term return. Think Walmart's strategy, high volume with low prices makes more money in the long run than the opposite. It's also why PCs outsell Macs by a huge margin. In this case it's subscription fees hopefully make up for larger one time purchases only once every several years (Windows/Office). And/or also realizing their once paid for products are selling less since there are free competitive alternatives. So they wouldn't have been making that money anyway, might as well make them free'ish in the hopes of keeping people in the ecosystem. The war of hardware is over really, it's all about the ecosystem these days and MS is moving that direction being the ONLY cross-platform company.
Just to add some more context, believe it or not I'm not some rabid anti-Google guy. I used Android for years and loved it. But over the years I've seen Google slowly devolve into a company with really poor business ethics (hence this thread!) and it's only cemented my decision to no longer use them for anything. YouTube (who they bought, not created) is of course an exception, though they did make it annoying to use once they integrated it with G+. It's a great example really, they took something wonderful and twisted/leveraged/hooked it into their data-mining machine.
The cr?me de la cr?me? This video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnVuqfXohxc
Be together not the same. Hey Google, be together WITH US and release your services on Windows devices. So that we can be...the same, you know? Because right now MS is doing a far better job at that than you are.
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