Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Google And Microsoft : Twin Effect

The evidence can be found everywhere. Headlines, headways and in some people's head.
The pattern is recognizable given that one have been around since DOS days.
Google, the company that was once just associated with "search" is no longer staying where its domain is. It has tentacles that reaches far and wide but with one clear difference. The community don't realize it or maybe they do but they sure don't hate it.

Perhaps MS's reputation and brand was so powerfully seared into the hearts and minds of computing folks that we could only identify MS as the only possible gigantic sofware company that we could hate. One that squashes its competitor mercilessly using various "partnership" tactics through the history of IT. Novell...Nescape....scandisk....C++ builder...Word Perfect...Quattro Pro....OS/2......Isn't scandisk just a program, yeah, so was Netscape browser. Sure some of these companies survived but became obscure tech names, a fraction of what they could have been.

Times are changing indeed. Windows Mobile is losing out. Microsoft Live Search is a joke. A victim of its own game in an ever changing world. Its rare to hear MS losing in an area that it plans to focus or profit from but the new kid in town is nothing like MS have seen. Previously everyone had to fight MS in MS own turf...and since that turf is the OS itself, it was rarely a fair fight. Its 90% of the World's desktops dear, get real. But what if you challenge MS in a very unlikely place...the cloud?

When MS IE7 could not open the Google Wave page and Chrome could use it perfectly (ok firefox and other browsers worked somewhat) , you get a very familiar feeling. This creepy Dejavu feeling just jumps out of the page into your lap.

Android phones? Google Doc? GMail for Corporates? GAE hosted domain.

China always had a long history of bad Emperors and those who attempt to topple them. Given such power and position, it was usual for Emperors to behave like morons and do what they want regardless of the citizens sentiments. Heck an Emperor gets to have 600++ wives!

But Chinese History also teaches us one thing, topple one Emperor, the one taking over his place is no better.

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