The bitter battle between Internet poster child Google and behemoth Microsoft got even uglier in court recently with Google’s poaching of Kai-Fu Lee, hired to set up a research centre in China. Microsoft claims that Lee, a former vice president, is in violation of a one-year non-compete clause. Google, playing victim in this case, claims that Microstoft is merely attempting to intimidate a fast growing rival.
A court statement by Mark Lucovsky, a former Microsoft defector and current Google employee, alleges that on news that he was leaving for Google, Steve Ballmer threw a chair against the wall, yelling “F*#%ing Eric Schmidt is a f*#%ing pussy. I’m going to f*#%ing bury that guy, I have done it before and I will do it again. I’m going to f*#%ing kill Google.” Ballmer has since dismissed the allegations as an exaggeration.
Today, Google is more than the popular search engine that has become the darling of Wall Street and the focal point of much of the buzz generated by the online community. Think bigger. The search engine giant has gradually morphed into a full-fledged software company that has Microsoft and its executives on its heels. Since dethroning its competitors in the search space, Google has churned out an endless array of well-received innovative products that arguably makes it one of the world's hottest tech companies.
In fact, Google may very well be this generation's "Microsoft." Besides its ever so popular search engine, Google has managed to encroach upon Microsoft's turf, launching Gmail to meet head on with MSN Hotmail, Google Talk (move over MSN Messenger), and even Google Desktop 2 (move over Windows?), a new desktop application that works much like an operating system feature that can launch PC applications and search files on your hard drive, from documents to media files. It even comes with a Scratch Pad that just might be Google's answer to Notepad.
While a "Google Office" may not come to fruition in the very near future, we are already seeing signs of what may become a "Google-opoloy." In its relatively short life span, Google has introduced several new products outside of Microsoft's realm, launching Froogle (a product search engine/shopping directory), Picasa (a very user-friendly PC photo software application), Google Maps and Google Earth (3D satellite mapping function), and most recently, a beta version of its search engine for Weblogs ( a.k.a. blogs).
Besides its constant and ambitious innovations, perhaps what makes Google such a formidable nemesis to Microsoft is its inherent business model. Since Google's products are free to use and download, closely linked together, and accessible on virtually every online medium, Microsoft's past strategies of aggressively muscling rivals out of the marketplace (think Netscape, Lotus, WordPerfect, Novell) would render ineffective. It's rather difficult to undercut a free product. Likewise, any attempt from Microsoft to steer users away from Google's search engine by bundling its search capabilities with its operating system would face various hurdles.
Not only would Microsoft have to face the wrath of antitrust regulators, but also the very fact that Google has already found a way to penetrate desktops (via Google Desktop and toolbar) and that using Google does not require a PC, given that a mobile phone, television, BlackBerry, and an Apple will do just fine. Perhaps Google's strategy hits too close to home and is what boils the blood of Microsoft executives the most. Not only has Google allegedly become the new home to approximately 100 ex-Microsoft employees, the company is winning battles by taking pages right from Microsoft's own playbook.
As Microsoft has probably come to realize, dethroning Google will be no simple task. In Google, the company faces a competitor unlike any other it has faced, one that will prove more costly and take much longer to contend with and bring down. Yet with almost $40 billion in revenues and $34 billion in cash, perhaps there is no better company than Microsoft equipped to build a Google killer.
Despite Google’s recent successes, we have to keep in mind that they are still a very young company. Judging by Microsoft’s proven track record, to count out Microsoft in this battle would indeed be premature, if not foolish. I thought that Gate’s hit it right on the money when he was quoted in a recent Fortune article (cited below) that search is still very much in its infancy, implying that the way we currently think about search will be completely different from what it will be. A glimpse of the future is hinted at as we are asked to imagine while writing a document, having the ability to search for facts within MS Word as opposed to opening a browser, going to a search engine, and clicking on all the resulting links to find what you need.
Information sources for additional reading:
-www.webpronews.com
-news.bbc.co.uk
-www.fortune.com
-www.zdnet.com.au
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