Coop's Corner

Editors note: This is part of a series of stories about the recession's effect on the tech industry.

The Erickson family

(Credit: Andy Erickson)

With the calendar winding down, the hours get hardest when Andy Erickson and his wife, Andrea, are forced to take out their checkbook and do the math.

"We see the finish line in December before we have to dive into personal savings," says the unemployed, 39-year-old father of three. "It can turn into a tense talk between us for a couple of hours."

For the last 15 years, Erickson had steady work as an IT consultant, most recently at Lucrum in Cincinnati, Ohio. But like a lot of people, he became yet another statistic when his company laid him off--on Halloween, no less--because of the slumping economy.

With belt-tightening now the order of the day, the IT industry so far has lost more than 140,000 jobs this year, according to Challenger Gray & Christmas. That's more than the total for all of 2007--and does not even include the nearly 20,000 people who have received pink slips since the start of the fourth quarter.

Old IT hands who prefer to see the glass as half full can point out that the information technology business has generally fared better than other sectors of the economy. Unlike 2001 and 2002, when the economy was buffeted by the twin blows caused by the September 11 terrorist attacks and the dot-com bust, this time around high tech is not suffering drastic declines--at least not yet.

Unemployment is up across the board.

(Credit: Challenger Gray & Christmas)

In fact, Forrester recently revised its 2008 technology spending growth prediction to 5.4 percent, up from 3.4 percent. The slowdown that Forrester expected would kill tech spending in the first half never came. Of course, this is just a snapshot in time. The effects of a mortgage crisis that turned into a financial crisis which, in turn, transmogrified into a global economic crisis are still playing out.

All of that has turned life upside down for families like the Ericksons.

"Most days we try not think about it," he said, adding that "it can be stressful at times."

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That stress extends across the IT world spectrum, ranging from networking to the telecommunications sector to computer manufacturing. Recent layoffs announced by Sun Microsystems, Applied Materials, Adobe Systems, and National Semiconductor only add to the worry about what waits over the horizon.

Call it an exercise in groupthink or simply a survival mode reflex, but hunkering down certainly appears to be the common theme. While the causes of this recession may be different, IT professionals are no strangers to uncertainty and they remember the drill. In practice, this translates into budget cuts and freezes on travel, hiring, and general spending. It also involves delayed implementation of previously planned projects.

"We're still in a state of overreaction. It probably will stay that way for another couple months," said Chad Moore, founder and president of Xonicwave, an IT consultancy in San Diego. He does not expect a thaw until the January-to-March time frame at the earliest. Moore says that his clients are grappling with a big unknown and that everybody's gotten too scared to make a move.

"Probably a good 25 percent (of our clients) are still not accepting of things," he said. "Another 50 percent are simply shell-shocked, asking what the hell to do and how to deal with it. The other 25 percent is slowly migrating to the fact that not only do we have to weather the storm, but we have to come out of it with both guns blazing."

There's the rub. Until there's a change in the prevailing psychology, IT unemployment rates will climb. As Moore describes it, the reaction to the recent financial meltdown still interferes with the ability of companies to craft a post-crash IT strategy.

"You have to make payroll, but at the end of the day you have to ask yourselves 'how are you separating yourselves from the competition?'" he said.

It's not an academic question either. Pressured by the recession, crisis management is the order of the day. Companies are being forced to re-evaluate how best to evolve into leaner enterprises that are better fit for survival.

"There's a lot of trepidation about what the future might hold," says Warren Arbogast, an IT consultant who specializes in working with higher education. "In conversations, the word 'terrified' comes up a lot on a personal level."

"People are trying to avoid (cutting) things that are core to their business and that might directly affect customers or sales," he said. "They're also trying not to touch security. Other than that, it's fair game."

One bright spot amid the prevailing gloom is that organizations are more open to new ideas and new ways of doing things, according to Arbogast, who runs Boulder Management Group, in Boulder, Colo.

"When times are tight, I'm seeing business actually uptick...with people saying that now might be the right time to have someone come in and help them envision a different future," he said.

Contract work: Take what you can get?
Until then, even IT professionals with extensive resumes are pressed to find replacement jobs that are commensurate with their old positions. Take Jim Martin, who was laid off by Woven Systems in September.

The 39-year-old network architect and systems engineer had been working on the design of 10-Gigabit Ethernet switching technology for server consolidation and storage networking. The company's B round of financing started to run low just as the venture capital market dried up. Then Intel and AMD decided not to include 10-Gigabit Ethernet on their next generation of server motherboards. It was a perfect storm and it forced Woven to hand out pink slips.

Jim Martin

(Credit: Jim Martin)

Martin's family wants him to return to the East Coast, but he prefers to remain in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has lived for the last 15 years. He's giving it a shot, but even a long and accomplished resume is no longer a guarantee of finding a job--not at this point in the business cycle.

"I've had a lot of people interested," he said. "But what I've found is that they're taking me to their companies and it's, 'Hey, this is a great person. He should come join us.' But then their job openings freeze while everybody sort of panics at this stage of the game."

On the flip side, many companies have budgeted projects that need to get completed. And if full-timers are losing their jobs, that opens the door for part-timers like Martin, who has made do by signing on for contract work.

"It's not very stimulating work, but money is money when times are tough," he says. "What worries me is that, while I'm lucky enough to have a pretty strong background, the people who are younger and not quite as experienced won't have the same opportunity."

Needless to say, the economic crisis is testing businesses and individuals like no time since the 1930s. Fear feeds on fear because nobody has any idea when the miasma will lift. The pressure cooker atmosphere was punctuated by a Silicon Valley tragedy last month, when an engineer fired by the semiconductor firm Siport returned to the company's Santa Clara, Calif., offices with a weapon and shot three colleagues to death.

That was the exception. If the can-do history of the IT industry teaches one lesson to people currently getting the short end of the stick, it's that the bad times never last forever.

"It's cyclical," says Andy Erickson. "It's just a matter of waiting it out. I just don't have whole lot of faith in our government, but maybe we'll come out of this stronger as a country."

In the meantime, Erickson says, he and his family continue to hope for the best as they prepare for the worst.

"The kids know we just can't go out and buy gum or whatever. They'll just have to suck it up and be part of the team."

Coming up Monday: A longtime technology trade reporter takes an unplanned detour into freelance writing.

I've never bought into the "Sun Microsystems is toast" thesis that you often hear tossed around at industry get-togethers. Even in a deepening recession, this is a company with ample resources and a wealth of talented developers. But with some of the hottest development action now taking place on mobile phone platforms, how relevant is Java going to be to the future tech conversation?

Earlier today, my colleague Stephen Shankland wrote about the debut of JavaFX, a Sun programming language that's supposed to be easier to use than Java. In his story, he quoted Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz talking up the potential of a coherent "runtime" foundation that won't wind up splintered into different (and incompatible) versions. To wit: "We're making our binaries available" to mobile phone makers "so we can unify the Java platform implementation."

In the video posted above, Schwartz described the launch as a "breathtaking new release" of the Java platform, which is said to be the company's most profitable software product. That's the usual hard sell I've come to expect from Schwartz, who is as smart a technology salesman as you'll find in the computer industry. And it's not just empty sloganeering.

To be fair, Java has made inroads into the server and mobile phone markets. But I remember some of the more lofty claims made by Sun execs after Java debuted in 1995. And, truth be told, it was the hot product for a while--so much so that its mere mention irritated Bill Gates to the point where he blew up at a bunch of us when we pressed him about Java's potential impact on Microsoft.

But the product's $34 million in billings is still piddling when compared to Sun's hardware sales. And despite Schwartz's enthusiasm, you have to wonder whether Java's uptake among mobile carriers would have been greater had their developers also not had to choose from a multiplicity of competing platforms.

Now the competition for mobile platforms puts Java up against the likes of Symbian and others. I won't try to predict how this is going to turn out. But we heard one potentially troubling harbinger for Sun on Thursday: at a Symbian partner conference in San Francisco, AT&T's Roger Smith, who directs next-generation services at the company, did not bother mincing words. "Java has not been a success," he said.

If Schwartz is as clever as I think he is, the guy placed a call to Smith as soon as that news report reached his desk. On a Java-based phone, no doubt.

So let's see whether I've got this straight. A white collar crook responsible for the biggest fraud in U.S. corporate history wants a presidential pardon. Meanwhile, a head case of a footballer who ran afoul of my native city's handgun laws may very well receive a mandatory prison sentence.

Plax in happier days

(Credit: CBS Sports)

Jupiter is definitely not aligned with Mars.

By now, you're doubtless familiar with the public travail of one Plaxico Burress, the star receiver for (my beloved) New York Giants, who was arraigned for criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree. Last week, Burress was out late (make that very late) partying at a Manhattan club when a gun he had allegedly stuck into his sweatpants accidentally fired a bullet into his thigh. Thankfully nobody else was hurt. (Burress is probably equally thankful that he didn't shoot off another piece of his anatomy.)

Burris is in a lot of trouble. He had a handgun permit issued by Florida. But as the Cato Institute's David Kopel points out in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, as an out-of-state resident, he could not register for a permit in New York. Personally, I would ban all handguns, but that's just me being a typical San Francisco leftist weenie.

And now Burress may get sent to jail because of a New York statute, which orders a mandatory sentence for anyone violating local gun laws. That's harsh. Of course, you might ask what he was doing packing a Glock when he was ostensibly out trying to bed groupies. Good question. So let's convict Burress for being a knucklehead. The fact is that you could find a lot of other people who also deserve to do time for that same offense.

I was thinking about Burress' predicament after learning that WorldCom's former CEO, Bernie Ebbers wants George Bush to commute the rest of his jail sentence. In 2005, he was convicted of fraud and conspiracy, thus earning him a prized place along side of Enron's Ken Lay in the dot-com era's pantheon of corporate liars, cheats, and scoundrels.

Next Weekend at Bernie's?

(Credit: CBS News)

Let's recall that this is the same guy who helped pull off an $11 billion accounting fraud. Let's linger on that number for a moment. Eleven billion dollars. That's quite a sum, even in the bailout-crazed time we now inhabit. In the end, Ebbers' shenanigans finally came to light--but not before the largest corporate bankruptcy in this country's history.

So as the holidays approach, his lawyers figure that a lame duck president might be so sentimental as to grant a petition for clemency. It's hard to imagine that George Bush, battling the lowest poll numbers of his presidency, wants to add that one to his resume, though I suppose anything is possible. Heartless bastard that I am, I can't see how you justify sending Burress to the slammer while one of the biggest crooks of our era would receive a get-out-of-jail pass. That just does not add up.

Then again, Ebbers didn't scale the heights or fall from grace because he lacked for chutzpah.

More than a year ago, Pasadena Now's editor and publisher, James Macpherson, caused a minor media stir after hiring a couple of reporters in India to write up the Webcast meetings of the local city council for his online newspaper

In the year-plus since his decision, many of Macpherson's peers have had an increasingly hard time of it. (In a speech delivered earlier this month, Rupert Murdoch warned of even worse times ahead -- in no small part because of the emergence of the Internet and the haphazard way in which publishers have responded to the shift in technology.)

I haven't kept up with Pasadena Now. But in Sunday's New York Times, Maureen Dowd writes up her interview with Macpherson, who has now outsourced the work formerly done by the seven Pasadena staffers he fired.

"Everyone has to get ready for what's inevitable -- like King Canute and the tide coming in -- and that's really my message to the industry," the editor and publisher said. "Many newspapers are dead men walking. They're going to be replaced by smaller, nimbler, multiple Internet-centric kinds of things such as what I'm pioneering...I have essentially been five years ahead of the world for a long time, and that's a horrible address at which to live because people look at you, you know, like you're nuts."

He's not nuts. But I wonder whether he's addressing the symptom instead of the cause. Part (most?) of the turmoil in the industry is a function of the loss of trust, as Murdoch noted in his speech, at the same time that there are now a multiplicity of alternative, trusted sources of information.

Ignoring users has exacted an unfortunately high price, something Dave Winer correctly noted in a recent post:

Listening is hard. But all people who create products for users must listen if they want to do well at making products. That includes doctors, bus drivers, mailmen, entrepreneurs, programmers, and yes, reporters and editors too. Because if you don't listen you might miss a corner-turn and end up going off a cliff, just like the news industry is doing. They see the cliff, they know they're headed for it, but they don't ask how to turn the car. They don't really want to know. I think sometimes what they want is to be missed when they lie dead in a crumpled car at the bottom of the cliff. But we don't want that to happen. Not because we love them, but because life without them is pretty hard to imagine. They should turn the corner, no matter how painful it is. But in order to do it, they're going to have to look out the front window and the mirrors and listen to the person in the passenger seat.

How long will it take for them (us?) to get it? Beats me. CNN's experiment with user-generated reporting is going through predictable growing pains. It's an encouraging harbinger but I'm reserving judgment until the likes of the Times and The Wall Street Journal offer something similar.

As if the industry needed another sign how quickly times are changing, the lightning speed with which information about the Mumbai attacks was tweeted (and "retweeted") should serve as the catalyst for creative thinking about the future.

So much has been written about Tesla Motors and its Roadster electric sports car that I fully expected a letdown.

Tell you the truth, if I were personally shelling out $109,000 for one of these babies, I might be pickier about leg room or noise levels or any of the other myriad questions that go through a potential car buyer's mind before signing on the line which is dotted.

But at the risk of gushing, I'm back to report that the Tesla Roadster is a pure adrenaline thrill.

The specs say that the vehicle accelerates from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.9 seconds. It sure felt that way. As I tentatively pushed the pedal toward the floor, the Roadster attained speeds that I've never attempted in my 1997 Civic, and I had the oddest sensation. It just did not feel as if the car was moving that fast. (OK, nobody's going to mistake me for Mario Andretti. But it's not as if I've never gunned a vehicle.) It felt like driving a big slot car. Had I not glanced at the speedometer, no way could I have known the vehicle was busting past 90 without a murmur of protest.

The only tip-off that something unusual was going on was the motor's high-pitched whine. Other than that, no vibrations, no buzzing, no shaking, rattling, or rolling.

Kudos to the design team for figuring out how to put amazing thrust at a driver's command without paying a penalty in turbo lag or gear changing. The only thing that takes time getting used to is the car's deceleration when you remove your foot from the pedal. No big deal. After five minutes, that is not an issue. (Check out this brief overview I received from the company's PR director, Rachel Konrad.)

For some reason, the local traffic police were out in force as I tooled around, and so I resisted the invitation to push the envelope (much to the frustration of my Tesla handler who wanted me to approach Warp Factor 9). In a straight mano-a-mano test, there's no way the cops would be able to keep up--although I'm sure that's not one of the arguments Tesla's marketing mavens will play up in any upcoming advertising campaign. (My CNET partner in crime, Brian Cooley, took out another Roadster for a ride. Here's his report.)

As a technology story, Tesla stands in contrast to the dreary innovation record turned in by Detroit's automakers the last several years. Unlike the software business, where so many start-ups have been bootstrapped since the Internet bubble burst, when was the last time you heard of a new auto company emerging on the scene? The Roadster clocks in faster than a Porsche 911 and has a driving range of 244 miles on a single charge. But the company's fate likely will be decided by other factors.

Tesla's troubles have been well chronicled. The company was late getting to market, over budget, and recently let go of 20 percent of its staff. But that's old history. The more immediate question now is how much longer CEO Elon Musk will want to fight it out. So far he's had the stomach for the battle--even as the economy deteriorated from bad to worse. The calendar may be in his favor as Tesla is coming to market at an opportune transition time with the incoming Obama administration saying that it wants to foster alternative energy technologies. Now everyone is waiting to see the fine print.

The second point to consider is that Tesla faces a chicken-and-egg situation. While the Roadster remains a specialty item geared at luxury buyers, Tesla is not a volume assembly line operation that can easily force down supplier prices. So far, about 1,200 cars are on order. Before it can it hope to bring its own price tag down to more competitive levels, the company will need to generate more business. A lot more business.

That answer may well determine whether Musk goes down as the next Henry Ford or the second coming of Preston Tucker.

Mayors representing the Bay Area's three largest cities pledged Thursday they would work together to transform the region into the country's "electric vehicle capital."

At the same time,the global electric transportation company headed by Shai Agassi, Better Place, Announced plans to enter the U.S. market, beginning here.

The news warms this die-hard greenie's ecologically correct cockles. But can we dispense already with the pipe dream that the electric revolution will be brought to a filling station near you, courtesy of the far-sighted policies of local leadership?

That's not to say that government intervention can't help kick start industries in need with the right dose of economic stimulus. But for better or for worse, it's up to the auto industry--or what soon may be left of it--to bring the idea to life. (I'm assuming that Uncle Sam is not going to nationalize Detroit's car makers. Then again, there are any number of things I never expected this government to do. So who knows?)

If you want to see the glass as half full, there is encouraging news to report. At the LA Auto Show this week in Los Angeles, BMW, Mitsubishi, and Chrysler all demoed electric cars. Meanwhile, General Motors says that its Chevy Volt is still on track for 2011, assuming GM doesn't run out of money first. Elsewhere, Nissan-Renault, working with the state and the utilities company, Portland General Electric, hopes to have an electric car in the Oregon market within the next couple of years. The company's CEO predicts Nissan will have a mass market version ready by 2012. Cool.

But in the absence of a big hand from the federal government, all these vehicles will depend upon a patchwork system built by cities and towns. Can it get built that way? Maybe over decades, though fits and starts.

VentureBeat's Chris Morrison noted that Thursday's press conference suggested a new level of seriousness about electric cars.

"That might seem to have been the case before, but it's worth remembering that California was the backdrop for previous failures to commercialize electric cars, providing inspiration for the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? And the California Air Resources Board has repeatedly relaxed requirements for automakers throughout its lifetime, providing loopholes to escape switching off the combustion engine."

All true. The announcement shows good intentions, but knowing human nature it's only reasonable to believe people will continue to behave as they always have. Seems to me that the magnitude of the challenge is beyond the capacity of any municipality, alone or in coordination with its neighbors--assuming we want to do it right.

In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed into law the federal act that authorized the construction of the Interstate Highway System, which proved so crucial in the development of the country in the decades since. Any reason why that same sort of leadership today couldn't pave the way for a nationwide grid of electric-based transport?

After January 20, when the new administration takes power, maybe we'll find out.

Some marketing genius decided it would be a splendid idea to plaster the subway station I arrive at in the morning with posters promoting Microsoft's "I'm a PC" campaign. So twice a day, five days a week, I'm face to face with one of the worst advertising spots in Madison Avenue's history.

Then when I get home and turn on the television, the same ads--this time in full motion color with sound--are all over the airwaves.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Get me an ice pick so I can drive it between my eyeballs and get it over with already.

I'm obviously late wading in here, but I wasn't swept up in the first round of harrumphing when the ads first hit in September. Even though I never thought the spots were very interesting, I figured Microsoft would improve upon them. Eventually. After all, this was part of a $300 million ad campaign that Microsoft planned, in part, to counter Apple's successful Mac versus PC series.

Silly me. I think Rory Carlyle's tongue-in-cheek summary says it all: "I'm a PC and my commercials are terrible."

No doubt there's someone high up in the Redmond bureaucracy who believes it's possible to corporately manufacture cool. But it just won't wash. When I was a kid, an advertisement for Bic pens ripped off a popular counterculture phrase of the era with the corny television refrain, "Write on." (Get it? Write on, not "right on." Ugh.)

As contrived as that was, it paled compared with this stinker from IBM for its now-defunct line of PS/2 computers...(How you gonna do it?...You're gonna PS/2 it") Vanilla Ice couldn't have done worse. A friend who worked in Big Blue's marketing department at the time candidly allowed that the jingle would have had better success as a WASP rap ditty.

The production quality of Microsoft's "I'm a PC" spots is higher, but technical excellence alone can't compensate for the core problem: conceptually, the ads fall flat. Maybe it's me but parading a bunch of goofs all declaring that they're "a PC" and I'm thinking it's "Stepford Wives" time. If the idea was to counter the impression fostered by Apple's series of lacerating Mac ads, Microsoft should rethink its original assumption. Now that Steve Ballmer says he's no longer thinking about Yahoo, he should devote a few brain cells to cleaning up this mess.

The ads simply grate. As John Gruber put it in a post a while ago:

"And so what makes Microsoft's new "I'm a PC" commercials so jaw-droppingly bad is that they're not countering Apple's message, but instead they're reinforcing it. That the spots themselves jump between dozens of different people who "are" PCs, that the spots make a point of emphasizing that there are a billion Windows-running PCs worldwide, this only emphasizes that "PC" is not a brand name but a generic."

"Microsoft's new ads emphasize the same message as Apple's: that the Mac is the one and only brand-name computer in the world."

Write on. Err, right on.

Dell plans to preload computers with more subscription-based functions. The idea: give IT another, presumably less expensive way to access a myriad of systems management functions through the "cloud."

The details are still being worked over but the idea would involve a range of high-end services delivered through the cloud, like remote infrastructure management, or the ability to monitor and proactively deal with malfunctioning assets on a computer network.

(Credit: Dell)

"We think that we've sorted through most of those issues. It will work in some customer segments and not in others," said Stephen Schuckenbrock, Dell's chief information officer and head of of its Global Services business. He added that Dell will roll out its announcements over the next three to four months.

Some of this is old wine in new bottles as cloud computing has become a buzzword, covering everything from the delivery of computer services to the hosting of applications off premises. Dell already includes remote data protection services for its new E-series of notebooks. So it is that whenever a lost or stolen laptop gets attached to a network, the system will identify the unit and automatically delete any data on the hard drive.

What's new is that Dell is expanding the scope of its systems management software ambitions. Without oversimplifying, the idea resembles the approach Dell took in the 1980s and 1990s, when it focused on squeezing costs out of its supply line. The upshot was to accelerate the commoditization of PC hardware by helping to drive down prices.

Dell CIO: Stephen Schuckenbrock

(Credit: Dell)

Dell's timing in reaching into that same playbook is propitious. With the economy on all fours, the magic words IT wants to hear aren't so much "cloud computing" as "this will save you money."

Schuckenbrock, who formerly worked at EDS as a co-CIO, noted that customers increasingly are frustrated with cost and that when you look at how CIO's and IT organizations spend their money, "a disproportionate amount gets spent on keeping the doors open and running their applications." Of the annual $1.2 trillion that gets sunk into new computing infrastructure in this country--or used to get spent before the current recession-cum-depression--about $800 billion goes just to make sure the hardware runs properly.

In theory, remote infrastructure management and software as a service for systems management should allow Dell (as well as its rivals) to squeeze the associated labor costs. To the degree Dell can help reduce that sort of expense, its push into cloud computing may resonate.

"We're keeping our eye on how the industry evolving," he said. "I've seen estimates that say 25 (percent) to 35 percent of computer consumption could come through the cloud in next 3 or 4 years...You have to look at what it costs to deliver a service in the same way that you looked at what it cost to deliver a PC in terms of configurability, flexibility, or access to industry standard components."

In the last year, Dell has been on a buying spree, acquiring software companies like Message One, Silverback Technologies, and Everdream to build out the technical chops it will need for any future push into cloud computing. In the future, Schuckenbrock indicated that Dell would offer modular components that customers can pick and choose what they want in their computing environments

But as Dell builds out the software stack to compete against the likes of IBM and HP, can it help customers optimize for cloud computing in ways the competition can't?

Schuckenbrock's argument is that traditional outsourcers will have a difficult time taking large revenue streams with long-term contracts and converting to modular services that you can turn on when you want, and turn off when you want. That's because the incentive structures are very different. Thus Dell's idea is to build in the functionality as part of the hardware itself.

"If it came preloaded with all the services inside and all you had to do is go online and click, then you're automatically enabled," he said.

An interesting approach in theory. Let's see whether Dell can make it happen-again-in practice.

Internet Explorer dominates the Web browser market, but are that many people so in love with it? Meanwhile, the Flash player dominates its segment because lots of people find it to be a terrific. So might Adobe one day decide that the next logical step is to try its hand at building its own Web browser?

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch speaks at the company's Max conference Monday.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland, CNET News)

Turns out that's not such a crazy idea. Following the completion of Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia in 2005, the company's brass actually toyed with the idea.

"We looked at making our own browser," said Adobe's chief technology officer, Kevin Lynch, in an interview leading up to this week's Adobe Max conference. "We thought about how to advance the capabilities of the Web."

At first blush, that sounds like a fit with the message Adobe attaches to Flash as a technology to foster delivery of "applications, content, and video to the widest possible audience." But the idea ultimately failed to persuade management that it was wise to commit the resources (and in the process pick another fight with Microsoft.) "Our primary interest is to build a great platform upon which others can build great applications," Lynch said. "There are enough browsers in the world."

Too bad. As a user, I'd like even more choice. Even though they don't have more than minor shares of the market, I'm thrilled that Mozilla, Opera, and Google decided to design their own PC Web browsers. Anything to turn up the heat on Microsoft and force it to think more creatively about the Internet browsing metaphor.

For Adobe, the temptation was to create a product that would do a better job of enabling its technologies on client systems. But Lynch said the green light hinged on whether an Adobe browser would win wide enough distribution. As even Google is discovering, that's not an easy goal to achieve.

"It's brave of (Google) to come out with a browser," he said. "I love to see innovation. But will Chrome get 80 or 90 percent reach? I don't see how that's possible."

Credit John Thompson for having impeccable timing. Of course, the timing of his resignation announcement as chief executive officer from Symantec was purely coincidental, falling just one day before Microsoft dropped an A-bomb on the antivirus security market. But better lucky than good.

Microsoft's move to kill its Windows Live OneCare PC care and security suite and replace it with free consumer anti-malware software is a big deal for the likes of Symantec, McAfee, and the other antivirus suppliers (though nobody's going to say that on the record). Competing against free is always a tough sell, and this is no exception.

The only real surprise is that it took Microsoft this long to reach this point. But it's in line with the company's practice of offering for free the features that other application makers charge for. Let's remember that back in the Stone Age, companies used to sell things like word processors and spell checkers. Know anybody in their right mind still paying for that functionality today? Those companies--if they still exist--have long moved on because those businesses dried up. You can get that stuff (and a lot more) as part of Windows.

Forget antitrust claims. There's a world of difference between today's announcement and Microsoft's takedown of Netscape in the late 1990s. Microsoft is not the dominant vendor in the antivirus market. It won't be bundling the product with the Windows operating system. Neither will it force anyone to use the application. There's just no case to be made.

If past is prologue, I'm sure some commercial antivirus makers will argue that their products remain qualitatively head and shoulders above anything Microsoft could make in the security realm. Even if that were true, it doesn't matter. The economy's on all fours and times are getting worse. Some bozos may still be ordering $200 bottles of wine for dinner, but most folks are into saving their dimes.

In that budget environment, "free" is going to ring a special bell.