Category Opinion
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Well, we all know about the, ahem, "analysis" of Dr. Sara Radicati's merry band of opinion whores analysts over at Radicati. They were shown to be the opinion whores they truly are earlier this year in the firestorm that came from an infomercial disguised as a research report released by them, and then they decided to continue to lick the hand that feeds them with a new report recently put forth (reported in various places, and covered at Ed's blog).

Well, never one to miss an opportunity to take shots and spew crap, Dr. Radicati has foisted some new tripe on the media in the guise of her "view of 2004 and 2005". Since educated readers like you don't look to anything Radicati has to say for any real value, we can instead take it for what it truly is - entertainment, kinda like the "best dressed" and "sexiest man alive" lists that come out each year. In her entertainment piece she begins with some "duh" observations of the year past, such as:

1. The introduction of Google's email service, Gmail, offers 2GB of free storage. The beta was released on April Fool's Day, leaving many to believe it was a joke. The announcement kicked the Webmail market into high gear - other providers were forced to rethink their free-to-fee based business model, increase storage quotas, and find new ways to attract and keep subscribers.
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5. RSS technology becomes commonplace, allowing anyone with a web site the ability to syndicate content. A flurry of RSS aggregators emerge, giving users the ability to read web content in a fashion similar to email.
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10. The Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser, and a host of others emerged as a legitimate threat to Internet Explorer, which hasn't seen a new release since 2001 and is increasingly perceived as an insecure, outdated browser.

1. Yep, everyone knows Gmail is huge. Anytime a competitor comes into the marketplace and beats you on service, features, etc. you have to respond to be competitive, and that's what competitors such as Hotmail and Yahoo did.

5. RSS is a great technology, but it really isn't new. Blogs have made RSS big, and news agencies are realizing how useful it is to disseminate news. The important thing here is that blogs are the reason that RSS has taken off - keep this in mind.

10. Firefox was realeased this year, after being in beta for quite some time. IE is slipping because of the reasons stated. I am not sure that many other browsers are gaining a foothold - the statistics from my blog indicate that IE is dropping, Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape is gaining, and the others are staying the same.

Now let's take a look at the fun stuff - Dr. Radicati's "predictions" for 2005. This is where we enter into the land of the absurd...

1. We expect IBM Lotus Notes/Domino to continue losing market share to MS Exchange and other players.
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3. Blogging will fade away from the corporate world and be considered a consumer tool, no longer a credible source of news.
4. Microsoft will speed up development on the next version of Internet Explorer, and release an update before Longhorn (the current plan is to release the next version of IE with Longhorn in 2006).
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1. Well, Dr. Radicati is going to continue to state this, since I would surmise a large portion of her paycheck comes from M$. Whom else is going to fund her "research"? Her credibility is pretty much washed up after this last year, so she needs to continue sucking up to M$ to stay employed. Oh, and from what I can gather from friends at IBM, the Lotus Software group had a pretty good year - I think the continued investment in Lotus Notes/Domino backs that up.

3. Wishful thinking, Dr. Radicati. You hope blogs go away, since blogs are what exposed you and your organization for what you are - a paper-based infomercial producer. Blogging will continue to thrive, even in the corporate space. Granted, some common rules will most likely develop to help corporations manage the information produced by blogs, but blogs have proven to provide an intimacy and immediacy of information never before seen. Blogs are a primary way that many corporations "reach out" to their customer base, and I believe that this trend will continue. Plus, as mentioned before in this same piece - RSS readers and aggregators have become mainstream, and since this is the case it is now more easier than ever for corporations to maintain a connection to their customer base through the use of corporate and personal blogs.

4. Once again, nice hand licking. M$ had better update IE sooner than later, or they will continue to lose market share. However, with the continuing changes in the M$ product roadmap, I am not sure if M$ will even make 2006 for releasing a meaningful update to IE. One of the main problems I believe they will have is updating something that they worked so hard to integrate into the OS. Fundamental architecture changes to IE - which is what is needed to truly update it to be competitive - will in all likelihood require major changes to the underlying OS as well. That, or M$ will need to split IE out from the OS again, something I believe they are reticent to do. I believe that we won't see an update to IE until the next major OS release - and I don't think M$ even knows when they'll be able to pull that off.

So, take a look at the piece for yourself, and let me know what you think. What are your predictions for 2005?

BTW, thanks to Vowe for pointing out this entertainment article.

Rock
**When life hands you lemons, ask for a bottle of tequila and salt.