Competition is good. But, up till now, there is no competition. And the competition which people are talking so much about between Google and Microsoft is not here yet.
Google's Chrome OS won't be here for another year and perhaps more. So, as of now, Google is not any kind of competition in the areas where MS is dominant. MS's Bing is fairly new and Google's search engine is still way ahead in usage, and so for now, MS is too far behind to even be a threat to Google.
Until Google's OS is released and in heavy use for a while, MS will still rule. Until Bing takes a large chunk of the search engine market, Google will still rule in that department.
However, when Google's OS is released, does anybody really think that MS is just going to sit still and not come up with something that will make the Google OS irrelevant? And in fact, the news is that MS is already doing it's own web OS. When it comes to operating systems, I would put my money on the company with the experience in developing OSes rather than a relative newcomer, even if that newcomer's OS is based on the :Linux kernel. So, it will be years before any Google OS, web or not, even becomes a threat to MS's OSes.
When it comes to doing the business that MS is expert on, Google will be at a severe disadvantage. When it comes to the business that Google is the leader in, namely the search engine, there is already plenty of competition in that area, and eventually, one of the others, possible Bing, could turn out to be a very serious threat to Google. It will be a lot easier to unseat the leader in search engines than it will be to unseat the leader in operating systems. And Google knows it and is running scared.
As of today, MS has the advantage. In a few years time, MS will still hold a huge advantage in the operating systems for both the web and the desktop. When it comes to search engines, Google is very vulnerable and could actually be overtaken. That's why Google has felt the pressure and are making waves by trying to scare MS in the field that MS is strongest in, and that's in the OS arena. Google is reacting with fear and Chrome OS is not much more than a stunned reaction to MS's intrusion into what Google believes is their rightful place as the most used search engine.
Another point related to the Google/MS rivalry is that, when it comes to their respective fields of dominance, the problems with MS has been the problems with turning out buggy OSes and problematic applications in the past, while on the Google side, my biggest beef with them is their collection and usage of customer data without the customer's permission. If I had to choose between buggy software and invasion of privacy, I would prefer the buggy software. Invasion of privacy and the protection of my personal information is more important to me than the problems with the OSes or the software that runs on them. I'm pretty sure that there are millions out there with the same sentiments regarding Google versus MS.
“Competition is a beautiful thing,” writes my co-blogger Dana Blankenhorn in his last post. But the axiom is his final line in a meaty post about how computing if that’s still the right term is being re-invented.
When it comes to competition between Microsoft and Google, it’s worthy of my first line because before I read Dana’s post, it was exactly what I was thinking. Google is forcing Microsoft for the first time since the onset of the Windows monopoly to be substantially more innovative. Google looks like a real deal –deep-pocketed and determined. Thank God! At last!
The history of comers going against Microsoft is not pretty. Apple enjoyed great success in largely in non-core Microsoft markets and highly anticipated challenges 10-15 years ago from IBM and Netscape fizzled.
The absence of competition for Microsoft has meant laboring under successive versions of Microsoft Windows which is slow, inefficient and often unreliable. Microsoft’s excuse for these shortcomings that Windows could run everything under the sun never held water. If something better and it’s free comes along, I’ll grab it and so will everyone else.
Now, relief is in sight that could come from either Microsoft or Google. Let’s start with the news.
Microsoft following in Google’s footsteps said Monday that a free version of Office 2010 will be available online next year. I assume the announcement was buried in the keynotes at the the 2009 Microsoft Worldwide Partners in New Orleans this week. Sorry, I can’t watch three hours and nineteen minutes of Microsoft keynotes, but you can. Scroll through about three quarters of the way to get Ballmer’s keynote because he’s always worth watching (sorry, keynote video embedding was not available). ”
“You’ve only seen the tip of the twenty ten (2010) Office iceberg,” Ballmer shouted and then in the follow-up Q&A planted fear, uncertainty and doubt about Google’s Chrome OS. “Who knows what this thing is? It won’t be here for a year and half and they already announced an operating system (Android). But the last time I checked you don’t need two client operating systems. I don’t really know what’s up at Google.”
I love the rhetoric and fully expect a steady stream of invective from Schmidt, Brin, Page and company.
I am more familiar with Windows 7, the release candidate of which I have been running on a netbook for two months. It’s run reliably and its ability to easily toggle between web pages thanks to IE8 is a real time saver. It’s a better Windows, but quite honestly, it has a lot of applets and things I will never use. In hindsight, past Windows upgrades have been underwhelming.
I’ll need a year to bang on Windows 7 and load it up with applications before I pass final judgment. You just don’t do that much on a first generation netbook, but that it even runs on a netbook is a good sign.
Then there’s Bing (or as Ballmer screams in his keynote, BING BING BING BING BING) versus the Google search engine. Bing has garnered good reviews and Dana in his post offers a interesting analysis on the differences with Google. Also read Hiawatha Bray’s head-on comparison in the Boston Globe.
The competitive landscape for PC users has not been this rich in 25 years since IBM, Microsoft and Digital Research duked it out for operating system supremacy. Competition works!
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