Why Microsoft can't best Google

James Governor wrote in email:
“Don’t know if you saw Phil Waineright on google vs MS. But he has done a neat job of boiling down some issues that talk quite well to web 1.0 to web 2.0 diffs. Neatest insight, imho:

Microsoft’s business model depends on everyone upgrading their computing environment every two to three years. Google’s depends on everyone exploring what’s new in their computing environment every day.

I agree completely. Phil’s observation quoted above goes right to the heart of one of the principles that I’ve been calling out in my “Web 2.0 Design Patterns” talks, “the perpetual beta.” In the Web 2.0 era, software isn’t an artifact that someone buys, it’s a relationship between a customer and the provider of a service. All of the leading web application providers introduce new features in a daily dance with their users, who act as co-developers by trying out massively instrumented beta applications, and voting with their actions about what works and what doesn’t.

 

Elsewhere in the same entry, Phil nails one of my other talking points, “software above the level of a single device.” He says:

Most of the analysis of Google’s announcements this week of its upgraded desktop tool and its pilot instant-messaging client has seen it in terms of Google encroaching on Microsoft’s turf.

 

That’s looking at it from the wrong perspective. Google’s turf is the Internet. It’s not interested in devices that don’t connect to it — Microsoft is welcome to that market. It simply wants to extend its reach to any device that does go online.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s focus on desktop capability is the crux of why it can’t possibly succeed against Google (or any future Google equivalent). It’s focusing on yesterday’s market. Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop is as relevant to the future of computing as Union Pacific’s dominance of the railroads was to the future of transportation in the twentieth century.

I’m not sure that Phil’s entirely right on the last point. To the extent that the desktop and desktop-based applications give Microsoft control of access to the internet, they still have a lot of powerful weapons. But their power is immensely diluted by the flood of new internet access devices, not to mention the resurgence of Mozilla/Firefox as an alternate browser. (And it’s no accident that Mozilla is now receiving major support from Google.) But note how some government agencies are “standardizing” on IE. That kind of lock-in is extremely foolish from a consumer point of view, but really helpful to whatever company gets the lock in.

 

(To return to the railroad analogy, there are instructive parallels in the way that the auto is “baked in” to our economy by government sanction in ways that railroads are not. Gasoline taxes “fund” highway maintenance and development while any investment in railroads is a “subsidy.” I don’t know the history, but it’s clear that the auto industry managed to finagle a situation where the government collects taxes to fund its infrastructure requirements!)

But I digress. Go read Phil’s blog. He’s absolutely right on about the new rules of engagement.

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