> Furthermore Google appears to be making another old Microsoft error: deprioritizing mobile.<p>> Just as the evolution of Windows got sluggish once Microsoft had domination of the computer space, so Google looks to be resting on its laurels in mobile with Android. I’m a huge fan of Android 5.0 Lollipop but in hindsight was prioritising ‘Material Design’ (illustrated above) over combating performance, battery life and fragmentation issues really a wise move? After all Android’s native UI is the first thing most handset makers throw out the window.<p>What? Project Volta focused on Battery Life. They changed the entire runtime to ART for performance. Material design was a much needed solution to coherent UI across Google's properties.<p>Also remember that Google brought us HTTP/2 when Microsoft and Apple were completely ignoring the web.<p>GMail is great but they are still bringing Inbox which I find to be a good step towards better Email management. I understand it might now work well for everyone but still, they are trying to evolve it.<p>And they are focusing on moonshot projects while continuing to improve existing successful products in a meaningful way for exactly the same reason - not to be complacent. How otherwise do you not rest on your laurels?<p>The article is a bunch of baloney really.
Interesting take and I have to say I agree with it. Microsoft recent (1-2 years) moves have been pretty exciting and are coming to fruition. Google hasn't excited me in a while and the last few times they have the results have been less that stellar (Glass, Google Plus, Wear). It's great to see MS buy startups and keep them alive. Much more interesting to me than Google's purchase and kill strategy. e.g. MS bought Acompli, rebranded, and have a great mobile email solution. Google bought Sparrow (at the time the best mobile and desktop Gmail solution), killed it and didn't come out with anything better.
Windows 8 was actually a very brave move by Microsoft, and even if looked upon as a misstep, was really what brought the company to where it is today.<p>Before Windows 8 we just had years and years of incremental "sameness." Vista was meant to be a big shake-up but instead that got shelved and we got a very modest improvement over XP (driver issues and memory consumption not withstanding), the same with 7, it was a very incremental improvement over Vista (even if coming from XP directly made it look bigger).<p>Windows 8 was where the company decided to really try something new. It was the largest UI shakeup since Windows 95/NT 4.0. And I think that shakeup helped shake some cobwebs loose because since then Microsoft are continuing to take bigger (welcome) risks.<p>Even just looking at the Windows 10 technical preview feedback program should tell you this is a new Microsoft. In previous Windows pre-releases, they would fix bugs in alpha/beta releases, but never made UI or functionality changes just based on feedback. They ARE with Windows 10.<p>If you go look at the feedback Windows 10 has received, several major pieces have been actioned.<p>Seems like the company has a fire lit under it again. It is welcome.
Microsoft is not the new Google. Microsoft is the new IBM. They lost their dominant position and now they are unbundling like crazy, having realised that they need to be where the users are, not the other way around.<p>I get some of the criticism he has for Google when it comes to their OS strategy and Google+. But on the other hand, Google is making real progress in some of the core AI areas, and they are applying it so well to the tons of data they have.<p>I've been travelling a lot recently, and I found that Google Maps is towering head and shoulders above its competitors. Not only does it have a lot more high quality information (about public transport for instance), it is also much better at guessing what I mean when I search for something, which is even more important when you're not sitting behind your desk.<p>Google Maps feels like it is getting fanatical attention from the people behind it. They don't seem to be distracted by any moonshots at all. And if anything, the driverless car has to be an additional boost to their motivation. I feel that all kinds of projects that apply AI to tons of data are converging really really well at Google right now.
In a way I'd argue that Google suffers from the same real underlying issue that started to cause Microsoft to fall: complacency. They see themselves as a king of the world that can't be beaten. And in a way they aren't strictly wrong right now. So many people will still jump up and defend and support everything Google for no reason other then "because Google!". But that's also starting to change. In my opinion the best thing that could happen to Google right now would be for them to take a market share hit.
My biggest pet peeve with Google has always been their slow roll out of non-search and ad products. They could have shook the ISP world with Google Fiber. They carry the clout necessary to get stuff done. Rather they did a slow roll out and that lottery style is less hopeful and more aggravating.<p>A lot of the products Google has released were either terrible, stupid, or makes you go "WTF?". Google Glass was so worthless that I often wondered why they even bothered. I think Hololens will move the market regardless of its success. It might take MS one or two iterations to get it right, but if MS is willing to become bellicose on its strategy, people will take risks and develop. If Google had pushed out Fiber to more cities in a shorter period of time, I think Google could easily expand its product line beyond search and ads.
I would say Microsoft has more in common with 1990 IBM i.e. huge entrenched profitable companies that missed the biggest shift in technology in the previous decade that they should have dominated (IBM: PCs, Microsoft: mobile). I still don't think people appreciate just how much Microsoft blew it by not owning the dominant mobile OS.
Google does not fulfill quarterly numbers and now they are doomed? They have $100 billion in cash and are in a position to expand into so many other markets and spends 15% of their top line revenue on R&D. Meanwhile Apple is attempting to build a car from scratch?
Great. More 'X is the new Y' articles. I wonder if there's a list of cliches somewhere that get repeated by tech journalists every so often.
What I found most interesting is how Google and Microsoft are in the process of swapping places with regards to open source: Microsoft is taking formerly-closed projects open (particularly their compiler and development tools), while Google is taking formerly-open projects closed (particularly Glass, which was a closed-source fork of Android).
Rather uninteresting article. Microsoft still has a lot to do before becoming relevant again, and Google has to lose a lot before spiraling out of control.<p>That doesn't mean Microsoft isn't doing well. Their recent announcements and PR has been great (something they've always been good at). Microsoft just still has a big hill to climb
The biggest complacency is in Google's search results, which are dated, scattershot, and the opposite of "The Old Google's" simplicity. Here's some of my thoughts: <a href="http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black-hole/" rel="nofollow">http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black-hole/</a> Moonshot projects are fine, if the core business is strong. When investors realize the core search business is brittle, Google will be in a lot of trouble.
I've been saying this for over a year now. They've very much reversed roles. Market dominance has a huge effect on how a company acts, and Google is acting like the old monopoly trying to hang on.
No. Microsoft is still the old Microsoft.Opensourcing a few libraries here and there dont make Microsoft the champion of open source. Microsoft is still forcing people to buy Windows licenses over and over again which each PC,and businesses using MS products are still subject to license audits.<p>On the other hand, Google is becoming more and more like Microsoft.
I have a completely different view of how Microsoft behaved when it was dominant, vs Google today. Back in the day, most of the tech industry feared Microsoft. MS had a monopoly over hardware and software companies and bullied everyone. Google today doesn't have this monopoly that Microsoft held. Even the author's description of Google's strengths, "Google’s pillars of ads and search have become its Windows and Office", aren't as dominant as MS' products and definitely not for as long either. So I think it's incorrect to say that Google has become the MS of old. Those were the bad old days, when MS dictated how things were done in the industry.<p>While Google has tried to push the rest of the industry to its way of thinking, it doesn't always succeed, whereas MS in its heyday was quite capable of strong-arming the rest of the industry, time and time again. Google has generally pushed and supported an open source approach which MS is finally beginning to move towards. Quite a change for MS, nothing new for Google.<p>Kelly's article uses some poor examples and paints a glowing picture of MS. I think he's correct in that there's been a shift in MS getting a lot more positive press, but I don't think he's correct at all about how poorly run Google has become.<p>I realize this is short on specifics, but I don't want to make this too long. I'll agree with the critics of Android that there are problems, but in my view, Android has always been rough on the edges and is finally getting better overall. Especially compared to the early years.
It's probably more accurate to say that Google has joined Microsoft as being a fast follower more than an innovator. Just look at Google+ attempting to follow FB's lead, and now GCE being a very obvious attempt to emulate AWS and EC2, similar to what Microsoft is trying to do with Azure. Then we have MS OneDrive and Google fast following Dropbox.
I see the comparison, and in some sense it's true. I do think that if we zoom out a bit, you could make a high-level comparison and have it hold some water. But I think that to do so would miss a really big point and give this article too much credit, since it focuses on small details.<p>One of their big strategic errors of the past few years is to try to be more like Apple when it does not fit their corporate culture or product set, which is the opposite of Microsoft's mistake. Not only that, but Google has pushed hard in social, and not halfheartedly either--in fact, they've pissed off their employees by pushing too hard on Plus. Lastly, Google is pushing hard in artificial intelligence, making big leaps. Their moonshot projects aren't totally stupid and dead. Maps' StreetView started as something similar.
This is complete crap! Look at the pipeline of awesome products - Inbox by Google, self-driving car, Project Loon, etc. etc. As long as Larry is on the helm, Google will never be Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft is becoming better under Nadella but is nowhere near Google
I don't understand how Microsoft expects to keep developers working for their ecosystem when they're not building anything marginally better than their existing competition.
Take a drink if this article critical of Google is at a lower rank than we would expect. Currently:<p>Rank 11 129 pts, 2 hours ago<p>vs<p>Rank 5 115 pts, 5 hours ago