It is a Period of Civil War.
I was in Carson City last week visiting my family and having a great time. My cousin Mandy, having turned eighteen on 29 May, went to the Bank of America to set up a checking account (I think). Being bored and in the capital of Nevada (population of 58 thousand, compared to Scottsdale's 221k, Phoenix's 1.4 million and the Valley's 3.8 mil), Michelle and I decided to go with her. This was supposed to take about ten minutes, but it fortunately took much longer. This was fortunate for me because, while sitting in the waiting area, I was able to read a fascinating article in Fortune called GATES VS. GOOGLE: Search and Destroy.The article details Google's transformation from a search company to a software company and a significant Microsoft competitor, and why this has Bill Gates so riled up. At the heart of the battle, and the aspect that sets it apart from Microsoft's previous trouncing of Netscape, Lotus, WordPerfect, etc. is that Google offers its services and products without charge or hassle, making them free and easily available on the internet. Gates' historical MO, when faced with formidable competitors, has been to create a similar, possibly slightly inferior product. The market share victory has come not as a result of quality, but because Microsoft, as the maker of Windows, has been able to control what products are best integrated with the system. By preloading software or making it free (in the case of IE), Microsoft could control what programs users interacted with first. It is this control over access that has allowed Microsoft to come out ahead of its past enemies, argues the article. "Microsoft's genius was integrating them seamlessly to make them easier for customers to default to, and then using its marketing, distribution, and pricing clout. It won by attacking competitors' business models, not their technology." This approach is impossible with Google, though, because everyone, by using the internet, is already a member. Thanks to its brilliant AdSense and AdWords programs, there is no charge for Google's indisputably superior products. This means that Microsoft, for essentially the first time, is being forced to innovate and to write better software.
Google, a much smaller company and therefore necessarily inferior by Fortune's standards, comes off as the exciting, unorthodox rebel that Microsoft is powerless to control because it has been resting so long on its laurels. The co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, "enjoy their roles as tech's new rock stars" while Gates is increasingly seen as an old Scrooge in need of a visit from the Ghost of Google Future. It's fun to hear Gates, who I previously assumed was an intelligent, reserved, middle-aged man, come off as a pouting pre-adolescent that can't deal with the fact that he's just not as special as mommy and preschool led him to believe:
"[Brin's and Page's] popularity gets under his skin. 'There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it,' he says sarcastically, suggesting that Google is nothing more than the latest fad, adding, 'At least they know to wear black.'" [emphasis added]I can almost hear the has-been nerd's undoubtedly pimply voice challenging Serge and the Larster to a fake lightsaber duel.
Speaking of lightsabers, a related article I read today allows me to force this battle into an even more intriguing perspective.
Microsoft is partaking in a new greedy effort to appease the cash cow of the PRC by banning words such as 'democracy,' 'freedom,' and 'demonstration' from Microsoft's Chinese version of MSN Spaces, its new, free weblog service (as reported in a Financial Times article through MSN Money, that I learned about from Roger L. Simon via Glenn Reynolds). Ironically, MSN Spaces is, according to a smaller, subscription-only article, the only Microsoft product that is equivalent to, or possibly better than, its Google counterpart (Blogger, which this site supports). So the one thing that Microsoft might be doing better than Google has already been compromised by them, because no blogger with a conscience and knowledge of Microsoft's despicable cooperation in the suppression of liberty in China would suport MSN Spaces.
So beyond being an issue of cheering for the underdog, Google vs. Microsoft now looks like a battle of Good vs. Evil. It is our own real-life CyberStar Wars, pitting the young Larry Skywalker and Princess Sergey, with their courageous band of rebels, against the overarching International/Galactic Empire and the Evil Forces of Darth Bill Gater.
UPDATE:
I am very fond of Google. I highly reccomend the following products:
• Gmail, the best email service ever. Period. As of 12:55:00 am MST on Thursday, 16 June 2005, it offers 2300.127325 MB of free storage to all of its users. It has all sorts of brilliantly innovative goodies, but is only available to a limited number of beta-testers. If you'd like an account, leave me a comment and I will email you an invitation, which will allow you to become a permanent, full-fledged user without obligation.
• Once you have a Gmail account, you can create a personalized Google homepage with summaries of Gmail, news, weather, and other features. Google News is also customizable.
• Google Maps is one of the neatest things ever. It is much better than Mapquest, with more detail and easier readability. Scrolling is also much more intuitive and quicker. The local search and driving directions are also great, but the real clincher is the high-resolution satellite imaging of much of the United States.
• Picasa 2, a magnificently full-featured photo album program.
• Google SMS gives you a host of useful information from your cellular phone, including driving directions, business listings, movie showtimes and theaters, definitions, prices, weather conditions, and more.
• Google Desktop Search is much better than the native Windows Search.
• I have not yet, but I will probably begin using Hello soon, both to post images to my weblog as well as to share them with friends.
posted by Patrick Sauncy @ 13:41
5 Comments:
Thank you for all your help in my quest for digital wisdom and guidance. Malfud is eternally grateful.
Would you, sir, please do me the honor of re-designing my page? Because I suck.
Sincerly, a minion of Sauncy induced google/firefox.
?
I dont know. I LIKE MICHELLE.
Thanks.
I only suck up to the good products. Notice I didn't plug Accelerator, because it was indeed terrible. I haven't tried the MSN desktop search, so thanks.
And don't worry. Google is only 'good' so far as it actually sticks to that "do no evil" slogan. I don't assume that, just because it is battling Microsoft it will forever be a darling, benevolent dictator of the web. I'd love to see more companies challenging it with superior products. I don't want a changing of the monopolistic guard. It would be nice for someone, even Microsoft, to come out with a truly stellar rival for one of Google's major products to throw more capitalistic comptetion into the mix.
For all we know, Google could just be the next Anakin Skywalker.
By the way, I believe Google bought Picasa (version 1). I had that, and Picasa2 is vastly superior to it. Picasa had numerous bugs, and Picasa2 has many more features. They bought it, yes, but they also improved upon it significantly. But I understand your concern with buying out companies in the first place. That's a cheap-shot.
Check my comment at your own Blogspot, Scott. I can't get to blog.krazyyak.com.
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