Last year I decided that, as many others do, I would make a list of predictions for the year. My predictions included such products as Windows 8, Windows Phone 7, and even Chrome OS. So why don’t we take a look at how I did.

Windows 8

I said that we wouldn’t know much about Windows 8 until the summer time of last year, but I was wrong on that count. It wasn’t until BUILD in September that Sinofsky got on stage and gave a very detailed presentation of Windows 8. Even now, there are a lot of questions to be answered about Windows 8 — such as its launch date, or even a time frame for the launch.

I also said that there would be a beta release, that would only be available for desktops. Microsoft released a Developer Preview, with the Windows 8 Beta release coming sometime early this year — so I was wrong there. I guess I was somewhat right, as the ARM version of Windows 8 was not available and that version is primarily targeted at tablets, but then again the x86/x64 version is just as capable of running on tablets as well (so long as Intel gets their act together).

No surprise: Windows 8 did not RTM this year, as some predicted.

My final prediction was the further compartmentalization of the Windows operating system, and that the tablet version would remove the GUI and legacy support. This is indeed the case for the ARM version (it is still unclear as to whether the desktop would be disabled on x86/x64 versions if they were put on tablets), but that’s because the applications would have to be modified in order to run on the ARM architecture. Microsoft has said they have absolutely no plans to allow older applications to run on ARM, so in a way, they are removing legacy support.

 Windows Phone 7

“Microsoft will continue to not get it,” that’s what I said last year in regards to Windows Phone 7. By that I meant Microsoft would not update the phone as quickly as they should in order to catch up with the competition.

In a way, they certainly didn’t get it… It wasn’t until late September that Windows Phone “Mango” was finally released, which was an entire year after the original product launch. Also, it took a couple of months before any phones designed for “Mango” came out, which is awfully slow — but some did appear to be Windows Phone-specific phones, not Android phones running Windows Phone 7.

Sales also remained dismal, and they will until Microsoft gets their act together (and rumors about Microsoft and Nokia’s plans seem to address the current sales issues), so I was definitely right that “Microsoft will continue to not get it.” But that’s not surprising, as it takes Microsoft awhile to get it.

Bing

Bing did pretty well this year (not financially), growing from 11.8% market share to 15%, and with Yahoo! included the duo went from 28.2% market share up to 30.1%. The growth of the two doesn’t seem so great, which is due to Yahoo losing a couple percentage points in their market share. I predicted that by now Bing alone would be at an 18% market share, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.

I also said that HTML5 Bing would have been out 6 months ago, with that cool video background and instant search along with other updates. That never happened (the video background has happened, though), but a few people (including me) did start to see the new Bing, which then disappeared not long after.

Steve Ballmer

Steve Ballmer remained at Microsoft, also not a surprise. A few months ago approval ratings of Microsoft executives were taken, and Steve Ballmer received a 92% approval rating. That doesn’t seem too bad, except for the fact that the previous year that number was at 95% (Bill Gates has a 99.1% approval rating).

PC Sales

We kept hearing news article after news article last year of the forecast of PC sales being “slashed,” it was the hot topic of the year, after all. But in reality, PC sales did not stop, and they did not stagnate — as some seemed to think was happening or was going to happen. Sure, the growth was only around 3% year-over-year, but when you sell some 350 million+ computers every single year, 3% of that number is 10.5 million.

iPhone

I was completely wrong in every regard here. The iPhone 5 didn’t come out, it was the iPhone 4S (but it didn’t have LTE, as I predicted), and it came out on multiple carriers in the U.S. as well.

Chromebooks

Google hasn’t given any details on Chromebook sales, but according to ZDNet they sold horribly (in the range of only tens of thousands, if that). But who would want to buy a $500 machine that can only surf the web and be valuable if connected to the Internet? Apparently very few.

So there you have it, a review of my predictions from last year. I didn’t miss all my predictions, but then again none of them were very extreme… Maybe I will make some more extreme predictions next time .

Late last year Microsoft announced that Bing would be included as a search engine option in Firefox, allowing Firefox users to easily choose Bing as their default search engine. This also meant that Mozilla received money for each search a user made using Bing, just as they do with Google and other search engines.

Currently Mozilla receives most of their funding from their Google partnership, but that deal is set to expire at the end of this year. That deal started in 2008, and since then Google has entered the browser market themselves with Google Chrome.

It is now up in the air as to whether Google will renew their search deal with Mozilla, which could prove disastrous for Mozilla.

Introducing Firefox with Bing

Then comes the latest announcement made earlier this week, which introduced Firefox with Bing.

What’s so special about this version of Firefox? Not much, other than Bing being the default search engine right out of the box instead of the current Google.

There has been no word as to whether Microsoft is paying more money to Mozilla for this special version of Firefox or not, and it is unlikely we will ever know for sure. But I would think it is safe to assume that some sort of exchange occurred.

It now appears that Microsoft and Mozilla are becoming closer partners, especially as the expiration of their Google search deal nears.

Mozilla has always been an open-source foundation, and many view Google as open-source friendly, so the Mozilla and Google deal seemed like a match made in heaven. But then comes Microsoft, a company which makes billions from proprietary software, who seems to be getting rather close to this open-source foundation.

This has, unsurprisingly, caused upset to some people. After all, Mozilla’s goal is to bring openness and standards to the web, something that Microsoft destroyed with Internet Explorer, namely Internet Explorer 6. While Internet Explorer 6 was actually a decent browser when it came out — which may be surprising to some — it didn’t continue innovating. Rather Microsoft had declared they won the war of the browsers, running Netscape into the ground. Microsoft disbanded the Internet Explorer team, and that was that. It wasn’t until 5 years later that Microsoft would release Internet Explorer 7 in October 2006, but I digress.

But what is the problem if Microsoft sends Mozilla a bit of cash their way? So long as Microsoft does not interfere with the development of the browser, what is there to be upset about? Microsoft has their own browser to worry about anyways.

But this just goes to show that people who take issue with Microsoft partnering with Mozilla are living in the past. Yes, there is no doubt that Microsoft abused their dominance in the browser market and even the desktop market, but that is all in the past. Since then Microsoft has dealt with by the U.S. government and was watched very closely. In fact, it wasn’t until very recently that the U.S. government stopped watching Microsoft.

On top of that Microsoft has been very aggressive at progressing their browser, Internet Explorer 9 showing that. Internet Explorer may still have a little ways to go standards wise, they showed no sign of stopping. Not long after Internet Explorer RTW’d (released-to-web), there was already an Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview ready to go.

Let’s also not forget that Microsoft is a pretty big contributor to the Linux 3.0 kernel, submitting more than 361 changes. That’s quite a bit when you look at the fact that independent developers submitted 1,085 changes, Red Hat 1,000 and Intel 839 changes.

Ignorance Is Bliss — So They Say

So let’s get to what I originally wrote this article for: to show the ignorance surrounding this simple announcement.

Just take a look at some of the comments in this CNET article: Firefox and Bing–together at last?

Time to move to Chrome, just to pass the message. Today it’s just a tick to change default search engine, tomorrow you’ll need to be a rocket scientist to change it just like with IE.

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This comment doesn’t need much of a rebuttal, but why not?

Let’s take a look at how hard it is to change the default search engine in Internet Explorer 9, shall we?

Pretty simple, and I am no rocket scientist. All you do is select the search engine as you type, there is even a link to click to find and add other search providers as well.

How about Google Chrome? Oh, that’s right: in order to change your default search engine you must go into Wrench > Options > Default search engine.

While this also isn’t complicated, it isn’t presented as upfront as Internet Explorer does it, so to say you need a “rocket scientist” to change the default search provider in Internet Explorer is beyond exaggeration.

For Mozilla to go the Bing direction, there’s something else going on behind the scene.

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Pretty closed-minded, don’t you think? What do you think had to happen for Mozilla to choose Google as the default search engine for Firefox? Money.

The same thing happened here, Microsoft (we assume) gave Mozilla money to make this special edition of Firefox. Not only that, but the main version of Firefox still uses Google as the default search engine, it requires the user know about and navigate to this special website to download Firefox with Bing.

So there was just as much “something else going on behind the scene” to get Mozilla to have gone in Google’s direction.

I [am] sick of having Bing shoved down my throat.

It just plain sucks and even my Blackberry makes next to impossible to use Google with it being a pain in the butt.

Bing my butt–it should be called Thud!

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So apparently no one can be sick of having Google shoved down their throat? Google has been the de facto of search engines for so long that “Googling” has become a verb. In reality Google is “shoved” down our throats on a daily basis, but how many people do you hear saying, “Bing it”?

That’s what I thought.

There was a comment that now appears to have been deleted from CNET, which claimed Bing simply copies Google, even going as so far as to claim Bing copied the Google Image search result layout. Funny, since Bing looked like that since it launched when Google Images had a simple table layout for such results.

Then there is one other nice comment I found on InfoWorld I thought I would add:

There goes my last contribution to the Mozilla foundation.  Who ever decided to take MSFT’s Bing bling was and apparently still is unaware of how deeply the Open Source community distrusts MSFT.

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It is quite clear that this person, as I previously mentioned, is living in the past and completely ignoring the contributions Microsoft has made to open source projects and how Microsoft has gotten much better about being open as a whole than it was in the past.

I hope this little article has shown how ignorant some people still are against just about anything involving Microsoft, even if it isn’t a big deal. You can download this special edition of Firefox and change the default search engine back to Google if you wanted to, its not as if it is hard-coded into the software — its simply a default.

Oh, and let’s not ignore that there are about 20 other customized versions of Firefox available, according to Mozilla, including Twitter, Yahoo! and Yandex.

Anyone who follows the tech news has heard about the slew of lawsuits and patent deals over the use of Android, whether it be Apple or Microsoft.

Quite a few have said that these patent “wars” have shown how broken the United States patent system has become, but Horacio Gutierrez — deputy general counsel of Microsoft’s intellectual property group — says that these arguments completely ignore history, according to SFGate.

When Gutierrez was interviewed by The Chronicle, he said there have been many other patent wars following disruptive technologies. These included such things as the telegraph, and occurred to sort out which technology was built on top of previous inventions. “The smart phone, a veritable Swiss Army knife of digital tools, is no exception, ” says James Temple.

It’s an ugly process, but it’s normal and necessary, he said. Without patent protections, companies don’t have the incentive to spend years and millions developing new products. And without licensing agreements and the occasional lawsuit, their competitors wouldn’t respect the investments and inventions protected by those patents.

[...]

Google has said Microsoft is trying to “extort” profit from companies after failing to gain a substantial share of the smart-phone market itself.

Gutiérrez, who has been outspoken on patent issues in blog posts and press interviews, strongly disagrees. In our interview, he argued that Google is simply “standing on the shoulders” of companies like Microsoft and that licensing agreements are the healthy solution to these patent conflicts.

Gutierrez goes on to say that we are in a in a disruptive time, because, “[i]f you think of a mobile phone or a tablet computer today, they’re not your father’s or your grandfather’s cell phone.” According to Gutierrez licensing is not a nefarious as some try to make it out to be, and pretty much any device a consumer purchases is part of a web of licensing and cross-licensing deals to make the device possible — but consumers never see or hear about.

It’s just that it takes time during these disruptive periods for owners of technology to be established, and until they are established there will be plenty more lawsuits down the road.

“Standing on the[ir] Shoulders”

But what is it that Microsoft believes Google’s Android is infringing on? Gutierrez was asked this question and answered, “[f]or example, the ability to synchronize the content that you have in your phone with the information in the server of your company or in your computer at home.” This may sound like a pretty broad and far-reaching patent, but more on that later.

Other areas Microsoft believes Android is infringing on their patents lies deep with in the operating system, which are features that make the phone more efficient.

Microsoft has invested for decades into making operating systems more efficient, according to Horacio Gutierrez, and because of this phones have moved from being powered by basic operating systems into what we see now — smart phones.

This is why Microsoft believes Google’s Android is “standing on the[ir] shoulders,” because Google never invested into areas such as these like Microsoft has, and Google simply took that work without any licensing deal.

What Gutierrez Has to Say About These Patents

Let’s get back to that synchronizing data from a server or computer at home — which seems really broad and quite obvious.

Gutierrez says, “anyone can take a particular feature, particularly someone not versed on patent law and technology topics, and then belittle the significance of an invention.” The reason for this is because the patent is usually discussed at a very high level, but they do not discuss the entire implementation that makes the feature possible.

He also says that one should keep in mind that it isn’t the outcome that is patented, but the implementation. “Those patents (cover) individual features [web page loading progress, syncing, etc.] that have been created in a particularly inventive way by Microsoft,” and have since been granted patents by the USPTO. Microsoft believes such patents to be “solid,” but are currently waiting to be tested in court.

Today Bing announced a new feature to their search service, called Adaptive Search.

With Adaptive Search, Bing will take a look at your previous search habits and learn from them to understand the context in which you are searching.

So if you are constantly searching about such things as computer programming, computer issues, and other computer related subjects, odds are most searches are going to be about – you guessed it – computers. I suppose an example in which searches could differ is when searching for ‘Java,’ where I would expect to see results relating to Java the programming language, a coffee addict would expect to see coffee.

If you follow the search business at all, this may be sounding somewhat familiar – and it should, because Google’s been doing this for awhile. It’s called Google Personalized Search, which appeared as early as 2004 and then finally became part of Google Search in 2009.

While adapting search based on previous search habits is good, it can have its own set of issues. Just because I am searching about computers quite a bit, it doesn’t always mean I am. Due to this, “The differences are generally quite subtle, but the more confidence we have about what your intent is, the more personalized the results will become,” according to the blog post. “We certainly don’t want to make any assumptions that prevent you from seeing a diverse set of results and lock you into a ‘filter bubble’, so the results that correspond to differing intents (e.g. travel to Australia) will still be available to you on the page.”

For those wondering, you can turn off the Adaptive Search feature, but only if you clear and/or turn off your search history.

While Google still remains king of search in the U.S., Bing continues to gain ground on Google according to the latest data from Experian Hitwise for the month of August 2011.

For the month of July, Google commanded 66.05% of the search market while Bing powered searches only accounted for 28.05% of all searches done in the U.S. (12.98% from bing.com and 15.07% from search.yahoo.com). Google’s search market share dropped nearly a whole percentage point to 65.09%, while Bing powered searches grew nearly a whole percentage point to 28.99% (13.10% from bing.com and 15.89% from search.yahoo.com).

So Bing’s growth is still continuing and it would seem as there are no signs that this growth will stop in the near future. While Bing does continue to slowly nibble away at Google’s market share, it would take about 18 months – assuming their growth remains constant – for Bing to be tied with Google’s market share. Will that happen? I guess we will have to wait and see, won’t we?