Microsoft’s big news at the Web 2.0 Expo on Wednesday was the release of Mesh. It sounds like the Windows Explorer utility on steroids. It seems to be an advanced way to search and update files on your computer, your mobile devices and your family and friends computers.

As we all know, Microsoft has been in the news with their bid for Yahoo. So far, it has not been hostile, but that could change any minute if they don’t get a better answer from Yahoo. Microsoft is having some trouble lately with its Windows Vista OS. This is really the bigger problem. Microsoft makes most of their money from the $300 a pop OS. Microsoft Office is also nicely profitable but easily replaceable with free versions that work just as well. The Xbox is supposed to be a nice gaming platform, but it looks like the Wii has taken gaming from the traditional base of young male gamers to the general population. Very innovative. It is so much nicer to expand into a new untapped market than to keep fighting with your competitors for the same bunch of customers.

Overall, Microsoft’s biggest problem is the Vista OS. The desktop is theirs for now. But what good is it in the Web 2.0 world.

Microsoft’s release of Mesh was covered in this Forbes article, but I think that the most important point is in the second paragraph that says

“Microsoft’s pitch is simple: Today’s world is all about the Internet.”

Microsoft problem: They are not really part of the Internet. For example, if Windows OS was magically removed from all of the computer in the world, about 95% or more of all desktops and laptops would become boxes of useless circuits. But if you were to remove all Microsoft software from the Internet, what would be the damage?

The majority of websites use free open source software like Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, PHP, etc. The servers that are using Microsoft products are paying for them. Most new websites can’t afford to pay for something when they can get for a free open source program that does virtually the same thing.

In fact, Microsoft’s most successful play in the Internet space is their free Internet Explorer browser. But it is easy enough to replace Internet Explorer with Firefox or another some other free browser.

Without Windows, what really remains of Microsoft?

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Mesh, Web 2.0 Expo, open source

The Geogad website has now been updated and is almost, but not quite, ready for prime time. It has been a busy week.

On the flip side, since the website came first, I was not able to attend the Web 2.0 Conference in SF this week. I am sure that I missed a lot. I will have to make due with reading about it. One of the most interesting article is focuses on the conference and on the future of the economy. Basically there are two schools of thought. The first is that the US is going into a housing and credit downturn that will slow or completely stop the economy for month or years. The equally overdone and completely opposite argument is that everything will be fine, especially for the tech-based economy.

It is hard to know which is more overblown. With phrases like “nuclear winter” and “partying like it is 1999″ both making the rounds, it is probably more realistic to steer for something in between.

Another trend that keeps popping up is meetings that talk about how to make a FaceBook app. There seems like there is one of these every month for the last few months. But what is strange is that these meetings are now showing up even more frequently. There was one that I heard about last week. Now I spotted another one that is coming up on May 8. I know that making Facebook Apps are popular, but what is with all of the real world meetings? Doesn’t Facebook have good instructions on their Developer pages? Maybe it is time for someone to spoof creating these apps on YouTube like the “You Suck at Photoshop” guys.

Technorati tags: Web 2.0 Expo, Facebook Apps, You Suck at Photoshop