Google is More than the Next Microsoft
There are two reasons that Google is going to be more than just the next Microsfot: (1) content is the new software; and (2) web-based apps are going to tackle the old software. Basically, Microsoft might've invented the wheel (I'm being generous), but Google is inventing the car.
Just yesterday, Froosh suggested that content is the new software, so I felt compelled to take a look at exactly why and how that is. My main point was that content is the new software in that it, through Web 2.0, it is the booming IT industry right now, and in that respect, Google is the new Microsoft. As I said:
The hottest thing around right now is Web 2.0, and much of Web 2.0's bread and butter is user generated content.
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Aside from ads being content in and of themselves, they need content to be featured alongside with. This is precisely what Google has done with their acquisition of YouTube.
While content looks like it is the next software, then, Google is going to be the next microsoft without handling any of the production themselves. Rather, they are doing something much more entrepreneurial by standing-in as a middle-man between the content and the ads that underwrite the production of that content. [...] They do advertising and Microsoft does software, but just as Microsoft does all kinds of software, Google does all kinds of advertising.
There was a whole aspect of the Google Microsoft parallel, however, that I managed to overlook, and that I did so is, well, embarassing. What I'm talking about is web-based apps. For starters, less than a month ago, the Wall Street Journal reported how web-based apps are about to balloon online advertising. As an adserver, Google can appreciate that more than most, and it looks like they are turning up the heat on Microsoft in a very personal way by going after one of their most celebrated pieces of MS Office. As the Official Google Blog explains:
We'll soon be welcoming a new addition to the Google Docs & Spreadsheets family: presentations.
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We've already freed those of you working in teams from the burdens of version control and email attachment overload when going back and forth on word processing and spreadsheets. It just made sense to add presentations to the mix; after all, when you create slides, you're almost always going to share them. Now students, writers, teachers, organizers, and, well, just about everyone who uses a computer can look forward to having real-time, web-based collaboration across even more common business document formats.
If Google really is a one trick pony, then, that trick seems to be the internet (and by extension, Web 2.0) which makes it a pretty impressive trick. Sure, the online marketplace might have never taken it off the way it did if it hadn't been for Microsoft's efforts in making home computing so widely available, but even though the wheel predated the car, the car was a much cooler and more profitable innovation. Building on past innovations, after all, is what brilliant engineering is all about folks.
Long story short, there's a reason why even though Microsoft blazed a few more trail than Google, it neither hit the $1 billion mark or made its founders billionaires as quickly as Google did. So maybe calling Google the next Microsoft really isn't fair after all -- to Google, that is.
Story via HipMojo
