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Andrew asked: What has Google done to edge out Microsoft for the esteemed title of giant gorilla? Said another way, what has Google done right where MS has done wrong?

Well, take a glance first at the “Microsoft is Dead” article that Paul Graham wrote… He’s the one who articulated this particular point, I was basically just echoing it because I think his observation is essentially correct.

One of Paul’s main points is that when he was starting software companies, Microsoft was the one to fear. He notes that with the new generation of startups he helps now, it doesn’t even occur to them to fear Microsoft, and it may even be hard for them to understand why anyone would fear Microsoft.

I don’t know if I could say “Google did x right” and “Microsoft did x wrong.” I expect it’s more complicated than that. But I’ll try, anyways.

Some of it probably has to do with the way the internet has become a viable platform for applications, which can even replace traditional desktop applications — and how Google has embraced this (Gmail, Calendar, Google Documents & Spreadsheets, etc, etc), and Microsoft, has not (yet).

Sure, Microsoft has had the web version of Outlook for some time now, but that was a feature of Exchange Server — they certainly didn’t offer anything of that level of functionality for the general public, on Hotmail. At least, not until after Gmail changed the face of web-based email.

(I don’t think that’s an overstatement, either — web based email was pretty stagnant prior to Gmail; I would almost say that prior to Gmail, most technically inclined people used a POP-mail client, and did not use a web based email as their primary email interface. If I did not use Gmail, I would still be using Thunderbird as my primary email client. In fact — looking back at it Google choice to give you 2GB of space and to encourage you NOT to delete anything is brilliant. If you’ve used Gmail for awhile, and then decided to configure it on a POP client, you know what I mean; after about five minutes of downloading all the hundreds and hundreds of emails I had on Gmail, I quickly decided not to bother with the POP client, and just stick with the web interface.)

I’m echoing Graham’s article again, but a good example is live.com — it looks like Google’s main page, with Microsoft logos and colors mashed over top of it. Do you remember what MSN search (Microsoft old, “main” search portal) used to look like? I barely do… but I recall it was nowhere near this level of minimalist simplicity. Neither was Yahoo’s, but it is now. Both of them have basically followed Google’s lead in how a search page should look. In the area of web search and web “stuff,” it certainly looks like Microsoft is playing catch-up… with Google.

Even Yahoo has a lot of cool products now that outshine Microsoft’s web products: some they just purchased (del.icio.us, Flickr, et al.) and some are their own (Pipes, Yahoo UI, etc).

Microsoft certainly still owns the desktop OS and the Office application market. I think the reason that startups no longer fear Microsoft is that Microsoft’s hold on the OS and application market is so strong, start ups are not even trying to compete in that arena. What they’re building is web applications — the arena in which Google is the behemoth, which makes Google the company to fear… or to beat.

Of course, all this could change; it has before. Netscape was a far superior browser in the beginning of that particular battle, and we all know how that one turned out. With the advent of Firefox, the tide has turned somewhat, but for the vast majority of Regular People, the only web-browsing option is whatever is the default on their PC.

Short aside: We install Firefox and Thunderbird by default on every desktop. When users point to Firefox and ask, “What is that?”, I’ll tell them, “It’s another web browser.” Invariably they reply, “What’s a web browser?” It isn’t that they’re stupid — they aren’t. It’s just that the simple act of calling a web browser a “web browser” implies that it is a commodity — that there are more than one. For most people the idea that there is an alternative to IE is foreign — the idea of calling IE by a generic product name, “web browser” is unfamiliar. For most people, at least. Aside done.

Back to how history could repeat itself: I expect the Microsoft will, and maybe already is, trying to bind their web offerings very tightly to Vista. By doing this, they would keep people using their web products (if they had any) rather than Google’s. It would be the same thing they did by tying Internet Explorer so tightly to the OS that it was simply easier to use it than to use Netscape. This might be the only way they can take market share in this arena back from Google. And if they aren’t doing this, they probably should be.

Nothing too original here… just my $0.02.