How Google+ Punk'd The Oatmeal 218
ryzvonusef tips this quote from TechCrunch about a tit-for-tat exchange between Google+ and the creator of The Oatmeal webcomic:
"This summer, the artist (Matthew Inman) wrote that Google+ comment threads sound like *crickets*, poking fun at the social network's lack of engagement. He also criticized not being able to 'set up a fancy profile URL so I don't have to link people to http://plus.google.com/blergasdf1234thimbleturdorgasm99meatpoopypoopxv9donkeypie ' — a made-up, ridiculously long string of random characters. ... In retaliation, the Google+ team didn't cite its user growth stats or give an excuse for why there are no custom profile URLs. ... Instead, they just redirected the vanity URL back to The Oatmeal author Matthew Inman's Google+ profile. Congrats, Matt, you've now got 'donkey pie' at the end of your own special Google+ vanity URL."
I still don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
What does "punk'd" mean?
Re:I still don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
It's a reference to a TV show from a few years ago where Ashton Kutcher would play pranks on-
Oh. I see.
Well played.
Re:I still don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah.... Burn!!!!!
-- Signed, Kelso
Re:I still don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
TFS actually highlights what I consider to be Google's biggest problem: they don't listen.
They don't listen when we tell them about faults with search.
They don't listen when we tell them about faults with gmail.
They don't listen when we tell them about faults with google shopping.
They don't listen when we tell them about faults with Google+.
They don't listen when we tell them we've come to depend on service X, and please don't discontinue it.
And so, eventually, we wander away, and this is when the crickets come into play.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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I think you need to look up the difference between "I" and "we"
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Are you claiming google listens to others, or that nobody is complaining about these things?
If you think you have a point, make it. Don't mumble around the bush.
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"eventually".
I know that I stay away from google stuff. I use the search, I test in chrome, that's it. I put my heart and soul elsewhere, but not into google products. They asked for that, they got it. So that already makes two people; hence "we" :P
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To be honest, a metric fuckton of "us" never wandered TO them in the first place, so wandering "away" wasn't really an option.
Not that I give an airborne copulation targeting a ventrally ambulating toroid about the "Social Networking Wars" but G+ didn't do particularly well at gathering users in the firstplace (thus, the commonly cited "crickets" issue)
Re:I still don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't seem to understand that in most fields, crowdsourcing from the general public works really badly. Just look at the results of any given election. Consider GeoCities and MySpace were the result of letting everyone have input.
On the other hand, crowdsourcing can be really effective when the source group are experts and learned enthusiasts.
So, no, unless you have years of experience doing graduate level research in search, e-mail, or social networking, you should probably stop speaking with entitlement that Google should listen to you. If you have such experience, go get a job with them or build something better.
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TFS actually highlights what I consider to be Google's biggest problem: they don't listen.
Actually, they did listen to what the Oatmeal told them. https://plus.google.com/u/0/101560853443212199687/posts/L2K5K1GzaSh#101560853443212199687/posts/L2K5K1GzaSh [google.com]
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Of course just moaning on random unrelated forums is not going to help, slashdot is not the right place for instance, people won't be heard if they don't speak
Re:I still don't get it (Score:4, Funny)
Because unlike some other Robin hoods, I can speak with an English accent!
Re:I still don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
It means someone watches too much awful television and doesn't own a thesaurus.
Re:I still don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
Okay, I think I've got it. So the heading should be "How Google+ watches too much awful television and doesn't own a thesaurus The Oatmeal".
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I think it was actually a ripoff of Totally Hidden Video, which was a ripoff of Candid Camera...
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What does "punk'd" mean?
It means he has to put his hair in spikes and wear ripped jeans and lots of leather.
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It most definitely does not mean what Soulskill thinks it means.
something that doesn't fit this context (Score:2)
google+ is still lacking the ability for normal people to have sane user urls, so goog+ is still the one getting baited, punkd doesn't really fit at all.
he criticism still stands.. of course it's even worse than that since google is giving special treatment to special people who they decide are special people, the guy could write a comic about a guy who becomes the next teen sensation just to get his own short url.
but it's great advertisement for oatmeal now.
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Why I don't understand is why anyone would need to contract the word "punked", since the contractione sounds exactly like the word that's contracted, and contains as many characters; they merely replaced the e with an apostrophe.
Seems silly to me.
The reality... (Score:4, Insightful)
G+, a vastly superior platform.... ....except that there's nobody on it, which is what makes a social platform superior.
Unless your preferred social experience is finding new social groups, you're pretty much boned.
I participate in the Dragon Age Legends community when it was live, but when that closed, I wandered away...
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Circular logic is the best kind of logic because it has no corners, so logic with corners will really suck because they aren't circular enough.
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Careful buddy. Apple has a design patent on logic with rounded (aka "circular") corners.
You're moving into dangerous territory!
Re:The reality... (Score:5, Insightful)
The signal (# of users) on G+ is moderate. The noise (# of junk posts forced upon you) on G+ is extremely low.
Thus, the S/N ratio on G+ is very good.
All of this is by comparison to FB.
(The best thing about G+ is that it is not FB...)
Re:The reality... (Score:5, Insightful)
And my brand new social network Rossy, not yet released, containing at present exactly one post which is not junk, has a S/N ratio of infinity.
So much for S/N as a metric.
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lol, good argument. But i'd say that for a post to qualify as signal there has to be someone to receive it.
Re:The reality... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually there's a lot of people on it. I'm not particularly special and I have over 1000 followers myself, with many of my posts generating two or three comments and plusses. That's quite good considering none of these people know me at all.
When I tell people how to use G+, I tell them to use the search bar. People aren't accustomed to being able to Google social interactions, but you can on G+ (so long as they're not private).
So if you're into cars https://plus.google.com/s/cars [google.com] or funny hats https://plus.google.com/s/funny%20hat [google.com] or many things in between https://plus.google.com/s/needlepoint [google.com] ... you can find discussions about those topics, join in, and add the people who are interesting *to you* to your circles for those topics. If they find you interesting back, they may even circle you in return.
You can build great relationships with complete strangers (a lot like on isolated subject forums) and choose what to share with each group, or share publicly for everyone to enjoy.
If I want tor each the average person I went to highschool with, there's still Facebook.
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Re:The reality... (Score:4, Funny)
G+, a vastly superior platform.... ....except that there's nobody on it, which is what makes a social platform superior.
Actually the vastly superior platform is Diaspora [joindiaspora.com]... which no-one is using either.
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G+ has several features which absolutely stomp on Facebook. [e.g. Hangouts with game integration and YouTube streaming, putting your social connections in groups, and being able to SHARE them - let alone selecting who sees what.] ...except it's a ghost town.
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The hundreds of responses to each of The Oatmeal's G+ posts suggest otherwise.
--Jeremy
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Facebook posts that receive 125,000+ likes and 11,000 comments [forbes.com] laugh at those hundreds of responses.
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Who wants to read 11,000 comments?
G+ isn't superior to Facebook because it has more people, because it doesn't. It's superior because it has less stupid people.
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A G+ post cannot have more than 500 comments.
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Check out his Facebook page [facebook.com] for comparison.
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So he posts his ads to Facebook and his interesting stuff to G+.
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Look at Inmans post about this.
Looks like a lot of people are participating.
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Strange, the other day I was thinking that Facebook wouldn't be so bad if you got rid of all those people.
Re:The reality... (Score:5, Funny)
Strange, the other day I was thinking that Facebook wouldn't be so bad if you got rid of all those people.
Kinda like California!
Re:The reality... (Score:5, Funny)
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So you say.
Re:The reality... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're saying that each person that leaves Facebook and goes to Google+ reduces the mean IQ of both?
Re:The reality... (Score:5, Informative)
I know what you mean though, the average internet chatter does make me wonder.
Re:The reality... (Score:5, Funny)
The average IQ is 100 by definition, it can't go up and down.
So I can actually increase my IQ by simply killing people who are smarter than me. Something to think about.
Re:The reality... (Score:5, Funny)
And thus began the IQ wars, and a species' return to the trees...
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The other side of it: those of us with higher IQs could off those of lesser, and then redefine IQ to be an absolute instead of relative scale.
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I really hope that was a joke...
She is smarter than *me*.
*I* am smarter than her.
She is smarter than *I* *am*.
*I* *am* smarter than she is.
Dimwit.
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Damn, now I may have made myself a target. That was quite stupid of me.
Hey that may save me.
Repeat until insane.
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Actually, it was standardized to 100 at the time, but there is nothing to say the average today will be 100 (and it isn't, in fact) unless it is re-standardized.
Re:The reality... (Score:5, Informative)
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Huh, how's that informative? That's wrong. Using that reasoning, that would mean the average IQ of a group of geniuses would be 100. Same for a group of retards.
it's not wrong, if your tested base included only geniuses then that's what you would end up with. how would you know they're geniuses if you were comparing them to geniuses anyways?
if you're just taking a subset of people who are being compared, then you're working with a subset. but the mean is supposed to be 100 with a large enough test base.
it's not an official metric in any way anyhow, it's just something test makers pull out of their ass but usually the aim is that the mean score is 100 for a large en
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If the majority of people were worth knowing, finding new social groups might be worth my time. When four out of five people live for nothing but American Idol, NASCAR, and football on Sundays, it's hard to expand your horizons.
And yes, I know I could learn Portuguese and mingle with Brazilians, but somehow I suspect that people living for South American Idol and futbol on Saturdays and the Monaco Grand Prix aren't really going to be that different.
Re:The reality... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the average IQ is constantly rising - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect [wikipedia.org]
After reading the very long and very boring Wikipedia page which contained lots of reasons why over a hundred years, Peoples *results* from IQ tests have been higher...everything from Genetics; Good Eating; Learning Stuff. You get to the end...And their is a rather large section titled "Possible end of progression" which basically states that the the Flynn Effect was over as much as 37 years ago, and shows many results showing no change, marginal increases, or a deterioration in IQ scores.
You should really have read the link before posting it.
Re:The reality... (Score:5, Funny)
Why? You summed it up nicely.
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There's also a bunch of thing that annoy people who are on it. For example, try to change your email address. Oh that's right, it's permanently tied to a Google Account which is permanently tied to the one unchangeable Gmail address.
Don't use a Gmail account as your username and this problem doesn't exist. You do not need a Gmail account to create a Google account. If you use another e-mail address, you can change the e-mail address associated with your account at any time. If you already have a Gmail account registered as your username, you can still create another Gmail account and link this one to the account. Source: Google > Help Home > Editing your Account [google.com]
The real reality (Score:3)
So yeah, still waaaaaay more complicated than the same process on FaceBook.
Either you never tried it, didn't bother to read the link I posted, or you need someone to help you use a computer. Maybe your just an anonymous Facebook shill?
Google screwed up by linking these things together in the way they did.
No, you screwed things up by linking these things together the way you did. You used your Gmail e-mail address for your Google+ account. While you cannot change your Gmail username. You can certainly update the e-mail linked to your Google+ account.
To change notification settings and destinations:
1. Log into your account.
2. Go to your Google+ accoun [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Go ahead and try what you just suggested.
I had completed both of the items in the instructions I posted prior to commenting. It took less than 30 seconds to do each.
If both accounts are existing Gmail addresses you can't add one to the other.
I had not tried adding a secondary Gmail address. I only had one Gmail address. I'll try it now though. Alright, I created another Gmail account and added it to my Google+ account and selected this account for notifications.
You cannot link a Gmail account to a Gmail account. You can link one or more Gmail accounts to your Google+ account.
So, if I understand you correctly, the problem i
Way to go Google+ team! (Score:5, Insightful)
You've pretty much proved the guy's point! All right!
On the plus side, by astroturfing this on Slashdot you'll almost certainly show a huge blip in traffic to that link - which you can turn around and use in your end-of-month report to show even more phenomenal Google+ growth!
Wait, that was probably your whole idea from the get-go, wasn't it?
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It is smart. Don't be up in arms because you couldn't exploit such an "obvious" marketing decision
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+1
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Astroturfing? Please explain how ryzvonusef is a google+ astroturf account, despite his slashdot registration predating google+ by a couple years.
Or maybe he thought this story was interesting and you are kinda being a dick?
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Sour grapes much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Occasionally, Google does something cool (like the speech-synthesis YouTube comment feature they added after and xkcd comic) but this just reeks of sour grapes from the Google plus team. It comes off as immature and petty.
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Your sense-of-humor module seems to be broken, Aspiebot!
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You think so? I think that this is a much better response than the whole FunnyJunk saga with Charles Carrion (or whatever that lawyer's name was).
Re:Sour grapes much? (Score:4, Informative)
Ironically Google+ also announced shortened URL availability for verified accounts, which I'm sure the Oatmeal would qualify for.
In the mean time, they did this redirect, and it is quite funny.
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Who'd want to hear all the moronic comments via speech synthesis on YouTube? The 14 year old rabble dominates nearly every video.
~S
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The verb "to punk the oatmeal" (Score:3)
Really sounds like a euphemism for something. I was extremely curious what it was a euphemism for (my guess was "puking"), so I had to click on this thread. I was then let down horribly.
News for nerds, stuff that matters (Score:2, Insightful)
For very large values of "matters".
So what this has proved is that Google *can* set up human-readable Google+ addresses, it just won't. Unless it's some socially-inept programmer on the G+ team who has taken offense at something you've done and wants to make a point.
GOOGLE, WE GET SOCIAL!
(For very large values of "get")
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you can use one of the URL shortening sites, like gplsu.to [gplus.to] for a simple URL to link them to your GPlus page
I love the thought of pushing all my personal social media activity through a redirection service, I bet they won't record, datamine, and sell my info AT ALL.
Y'know what? Awesome. (Score:2)
They *do* listen (Score:4, Informative)
I suppose that the original post should have included at least two things:
a) Apart from the harmless prank, Google is actually moving towards sane aliases for G+ profiles: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/13/google-plus-custom-url/ [engadget.com]
b) For the impatients, there is a sort of "url shortener" providing the service now: http://iplus.im/ [iplus.im]
Apologies if someone else mentioned this already and I missed it in the discussion.
Ooold (Score:2)
So it has been like that since the 24th of May (about a month after the original post, see the comment by Google employee Allan Cross at the bottom [google.com]), and that's now being touted as news?
Ouch.
np: Future Sound Of London - Museum (From The Archives Vol. 2)
Random? (Score:3)
Should I get myself checked out if I'm seeing certain words in that apparently random string of characters?
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I hate responding to AC's but this story, unlike many previous "Oatmeal" stories, actually does things like explain to us that The Oatmeal is a web-comic.
Re:ummm....Punk Oatmeal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, a webcomic called The Oatmeal made fun of G+, claiming that it was impossible to make short URLs on G+, and they cited the aforementioned http://plus.google.com/blergasdf1234thimbleturdorgasm99meatpoopypoopxv9donkeypie [google.com] as a fictional example of this problem. Google, feeling particularly clever, decided to redirect the up-until-then fictional URL to point directly to The Oatmeal's G+ page.
This is allegedly humorous enough that it warranted being posted here. I beg to differ.
Re:ummm....Punk Oatmeal? (Score:5, Funny)
You should beg for a sense of humor instead.
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An imminently logical choice.
Is that a choice that's just about to become logical?
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Re:ummm....Punk Oatmeal? (Score:5, Funny)
I beg to differ.
Permission granted. You may now differ.
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I beg to differ.
Permission granted. You may now differ.
You saw a request and made it happen. If you worked for Google, we might be using G+ by now.
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> Google, feeling particularly clever...
sed s/clever/obvious/
Don't beg (Score:2)
XKCD? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the kind of childish joke I'd expect from an xkcd fan.
XKCD is about the least childish comic you can find, web or otherwise. Not sure where that came from..
It's been a while since Google hired on merit rather than "fit".
Did they stop the quest for people with PHD's or abnormally high grades? I hadn't heard that.
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Pssh, I know. It hardly ever talks about Mondays.
It has always observed life with the sophistication of a high schooler, but once occasionally spouted undergrad trivia. Today the author seems to have forgotten even that.
Perhaps you're confusing "childish" and "childlike". Calvin&Hobbes has a childlike attitude but is far from childish.
Certainly you wouldn't want them to "fit" into your existing team.
To avoid stagnation, I would only want them to fit so far into my existing team. That's how groups evolve: they don't kill off the kids who don't quite fit in.
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but I'm not convinced that it isn't just sugar-coating on some other problem in at least some instances).
"You're too stupid to work here".
"I'm sorry but it would be a poor fit"
A "bad fit" covers a multitude of reasons without denting the ego too much.
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Except that "You're too stupid to work here" would say more about the employer. Interviewing and testing are statistical exercises - based on your past experience, you make an educated guess on who you feel is likely to be most suitable. A good employer knows this, and understands that he isn't making a general judgment on intelligence.
Fair reasons include "you haven't sufficiently demonstrated the talents we require" or "you would be a poor fit for our culture".
Re:Wow! That's almost hilarious! (Score:5, Funny)
Childish?
Childish would be receiving a lawsuit threat and settlement request for $20,000 from a lawyer, drawing a comic about said lawyers mother being humped by bears, then creating a charity drive called bears good, cancer bad to collect money for two very worthwhile charities. Then collecting nearly $200,000 in contributions for the charity drive, collecting the money as cash, arranging said cash into the words Fuck You, taking a picture of said arrangement and sending the photo to the lawyer.
That might be considered childish. The author of the Oatmeal comic did that.
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...used only because all the alternatives are shit.
(Well, TBH, Microsoft had a greater range of successful products than Google.)
Who cares what they try to launch? When duckduckgo doesn't deliver, use Google search with ads blocked. Move on when something better comes along. They're nothing special or unique - just another business in the right place at the right time.
Beneath all that love of Apple [don't clutch that iPad too tightly], with the confusion of Why Microsoft succeeded in the 90's [No it wasn't because they weren't attractive alternatives around], Wrapped up in an off-topic post.
You get it...Why I have a Nexus 7 tablet!? Why I use Google!? and Why I use Gmail!? Because they are better than the alternatives, significantly so. The whole point of the article is Google have launched a new social media service, and its better than Facebook!
Ironically [and the reas
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"Countless"? Can you give me three?
That's as high as I can count.
Re:Google is like '90s Microsoft... (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, it's a real shame how Microsoft wiped those out and they disappeared.
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Yeah, it's a real shame how Microsoft wiped those out and they disappeared.
They have survived to today through there open source dominance, if they had been proprietary products they would have disappeared.
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Firefox and OpenOffice didn't exist in the '90s.
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Firefox and OpenOffice didn't exist in the '90s.
Firefox(2003) is an an experimental branch created by the Mozilla Project(1998) In fact the Mozilla (1998) project is actually named after the mascot from Netscape Navigator (2002) which it is an open source version of. Although the browser itself is based on Mosaic(1993).
Really I should name OpenOffice.org(2002), LibreOffice(2011) or Apache OpenOffice (2011), It existed as StarOffice in 1984!?
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Firefox; Linux; OpenOffice. Ironically in this Context Google is doing awfully well with Chrome; Android and Docs.
None of those are companies and, of them, only Linux really existed in the 90's.
I can think of plenty of examples of companies failing against Microsoft in the 90's but most of them failed because their product wasn't better than Microsoft's. The dominant word processor vendor of the early 90's (Word Perfect Corporation) failed because they didn't embrace Windows (3.x) whereas Microsoft did. The dominant spreadsheet vendor of the mid 90's (Lotus corporation) failed against Microsoft because they didn't em