Microsoft is fading into a black hole....

Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer said on Friday that Microsoft is the global leader in e-mail and instant messaging, but in Internet search -- the most important application category and the biggest source of online revenue -- "we are the clear No. 3 in the market."

He sought feedback from the crowd of IT pros, many of whom have dedicated their careers to becoming expert in Microsoft's products, on which Internet search engine they use.

"How many of you use Live Search as your default?" Ballmer asked.

A smattering of hands went up. Tepid applause.

"How many of you use Yahoo search as your default?"

Far fewer hands went up and the room was relative quiet, until it filled with laughter.

Ballmer, trying again, louder this time, "How many of you use Yahoo search as your default?"

The same response.

"Wow, we offered 31 bucks a share," he said, to more laughter.

"How many of you use Google as your default?" Ballmer asked.

The vast majority in the audience raised their hands, cheering and hooting.

Ballmer looked around. Smiled. Scratched his cheek. Rubbed his face with his hand.

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Now my take on "things" over in Redmond.

Vista is a piece of crap, Microsoft has basically admitted it was released undone and not ready for the public. Rumor has it that there are so many bloated lines of code that their programmers can't effectively program. Plus, who thought there was anything wrong with XP anyway?

If you haven't heard of open source, you quickly will. Open source basically means free and better. Thousands of developers across the world improve each piece of software and the "community" makes it better, for free. There are complete open source operating systems such as Linux available for download for that do a great job. So, no need for Vista.

Besides XP and Vista, there's MS Office, right? Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook. Enter OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice is a FREE software package that has Writer (Word), Calc (Excel), Impress/Draw (PowerPoint), check, check, check. Cost: Free. Check.

Wait, I never mentioned Explorer. You got me. You're right, Internet Explorer is the only way to get online and it will never ever die. Right. Mozilla Firefox is FREE and better the IE in about 100 ways and already has more than 17 per cent of all users.

Don't forget about versions of software either. Google's got GMail, GCalendar, Google Docs and a ton more.

Do you want to be a pallbearer at Microsoft's funeral? It won't be long now.