The Battle Between Microsoft And Google
With the advent of the Internet revolution, the latest and greatest corporate war is clearly between Google and Microsoft. While that is no surprise to anyone, there are some interesting aspects of this battle.
One of the more humorous aspects of the war between Google and MSN is the concept of the favored party. Many people, particularly webmasters, view MSN as the evil empire. In contrast, Google is seen as the plucky new player on the block, who is rebelling against the Empire. While this classical Star Wars scenario sounds great at first, it simply isn’t very accurate.
First off, Google has started acting more and more like a large corporate beast as it is grown bigger and made more and more money. This has taken some of the luster off the company and made it a bit less popular with Internet users and webmasters. More importantly, however, the issue of who exactly is who at Google is really making things hazy.
One of the little secrets about Google that most people don’t realize is the nature of its management team. Most of them are former Microsoft executives! For years, Google has been hiring executives from Microsoft. In some cases, Google has pursued very aggressive and controversial tactics to get these people. In one of the more blatant cases, MSN actually caught Google hiring away one of its Chinese search engine management executives — Kai Fu Lee. As the evidence came out, it became apparent Google knew that Microsoft would sue over the executive swipe. What evidence was this? Well, Google assured Mr. Lee that it would pay all of his attorney fees when Microsoft sued to enforce a non-compete and non-disclosure agreement. To sweeten the pie, Google even agreed to pay his salary for a year if the court ruled Lee could not actually work for Google. Wow! I wish I could get a job offer like that!
As the battle wages on between Microsoft and Google, the war is about to grow much bigger. With Microsoft about to launch its new Vista operating system, Google is already making noises about claiming the system is too restrictive and thus constitutes antitrust by Microsoft. Why would Google care about the system? After all, it is clear that the system will allow people to choose different search engine systems. The reason is probably the Google is starting to stray into the operating system arena. A quick look at the Google labs as well as the products that have been released recently show a company that is trying to move away from the single revenue source of advertising. With companies as large as Microsoft and Google, it is hard to imagine an online arena in which either can do business without competing with the other. In short, we are talking about a battle royale in the very near future as they continue to expand into each others realms of influence.
At the end of the day, the obvious question is who is going to win out? Will it be Google with its domination of Internet searches, or will it be Microsoft with its domination of operating systems? The answer, my friend, is beyond you, me or anyone else. The only thing I know is this is going to be very fun to watch
Gerard Simington is with FindAnAttorneyForMe.com - an online internet law information and attorney directory.
Tags: antitrust, battle, browser, executives, google, law, legal, microsoft, msn, vista, war