I started subscribing to Fortune magazine not too long ago, and their latest cover story is pretty interesting (you can read the first page online, the full article requires a subscription… or you can stop by your local Borders or Barnes & Noble (or Chapters) to check it out).
Entitled "Gates vs. Google: Search and Destroy," (get it? "Search"? These journalists, I tell you what, they sure are clever) it summarizes how Google has become more of a software company than simply a search engine, how Microsoft employees (apparently over 100 so far) are jumping ship to work for Google (Joe Beda is a well known example), and how Google differs from other competitors Microsoft has crushed in the past.
The main difference, of course, is that simply owning the Operating System doesn’t give Microsoft a way to muscle Google off the scene. In the case of Netscape and WordPerfect (probably the most well-known examples of market leaders crushed by MS), all that Microsoft needed to do was come up with something "good enough," and make it slightly more available (pre-installed and integrated, in the case of IE). In the case of Google, the same action is not really available. Certainly MSN search is, and will definitely remain, the default search engine when you fire up IE for the first time, but users, even non-tech-savvy users, have become accustomed to choice on the web. If users want to use Google, they simply will, and this is so easy to change that any possible attempt to make it more difficult is only likely to frustrate and alienate users.
Gates is quoted as saying both, "[Google] is more like us than anyone else we’ve competed with," and also that, "When we’re through, people will look back at how they used to ‘Google’ things and laugh." Evidently Bill thinks that Google will fold just like every other competition has in the past.
I’d say that Bill’s attitude is certainly appropriate; after all it’s his company, and he has a right (even a duty) to be fanatically optimistic about its success. But while his attitude is appropriate given his position, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s accurate. I have my doubts that Google will be as easily unseated as Microsoft hopes. The new MSN Search, while an improvement, was not really all that impressive.
Fortune’s article points out that it’s been years since a Microsoft product generated the sort of buzz that Google generates almost on a monthly basis. Now that is a very good point, one I don’t see changing any time soon.
