Microsoft will lose to Google Comment Self-inflicted wounds catch upBy Charlie Demerjian: Thursday 04 May 2006, 07:30THE WORDS COMING out of Microsoft are quite bullish, but the numbers aren't, at least according to Wall Street. The problem is those words won't match reality mainly because MS does not grasp the situation it is in. The problem, credibility, the solution, Google.Microsoft, if you recall, has few friends, only partners it has not decided to squish yet. Before you get all defensive and leap to its aid, name me one long term software partner it has. Long term allies are placed feet first into the blender so others can watch their expressions and 'learn'. From Stac to Netscape to more modern examples like Symantec and McAfee, they all have a target symbol on their back.This is not to say that these companies are naïve and have a 'it won't happen to me' attitude, they know it is coming, and usually don't have a choice in what they programme for. The AV market for Linux isn't exactly the stuff that corporate jets are bought on. The devil you know......So, the game they play is this constant looking over their shoulders, waking up knowing that they might have been put out of business while they slept are all part of the game. Play it at your risk, but just don't come whining to me when you get squished. You will, period. It is almost enough to make one twitch.For the longest time, Microsoft was the only game in town. If it didn't like you, it would bully you, coerce you, or simply do the squishy thing, clean toes be damned. Then something happened, this little upstart from a land 'over there' gave us a credible alternative, one that a vict^h^h^h^hcustomer could use to push back with. Long story short, it was the end of Microsoft's ability to bully. Seismic changes can happen without anyone noticing at the time.So, with this ability to force you to dance to its tune gone, Microsoft had to do something it really was not accustomed to doing, compete fairly. It needed a good product, fair pricing, and real sales strategies. Now, it is easy to be gratuitous and bash Microsoft, but it does have several outstanding products, and has done many good things over the last 20 or so years. If warranted, it can and will compete, always slowly, and usually only when forced, but the ability is there.Microsoft plays the long game, not the short game. If it takes 10 years and four versions, fine, let's get started, and we will win in the end. If you can buy the upstarts, fine too, we have enough money in the bank to fund a space race, buy a few countries, and make a time machine with the change. It can do almost anything, and has on many occasions.The problem is that computing does not matter on the desktop or server level any more. Microsoft won that game, and by the time Linux encroaches in a meaningful way, it will be on the next game. That game is called the internet, and it is not about a system, it is about a mass of interlocking systems, and of paramount importance, the people that use it. It also changes quickly, remember the slow march of AJAX, or Google Earth's long gestation period? You can go from zero to hero in an afternoon, and be forgotten just as quickly. Long dev times don't play well here, if it takes you a year, a couple of kids in a garage will beat you to it, and steal the mindshare of everyone who cares.The second most important thing is networking, not in the 802.xx sense, but in the social sense. The internet is about who you know, and how cool you are. Quality, brand names, and pedigree take a back seat to shiny and first.The two things Microsoft is horribly bad at, making friends and 'now' as a concept are both paramount in the arena that Google plays in, and Microsoft lusts after. The record shows Microsoft is, quite frankly, laughable at creating software on a time table, much less one at speed. This brings us to the other point, friends. You need friends and partners to bring neat ideas to you rather than to the other guy, or simply to do it themselves. The next killer app is being hunted for by Yahoo, Google, VC invertebrates and Microsoft. When you are shopping for dollars to complete the next big thing, dollars count, but what counts more is knowing you will walk out of a meeting without your ideas being stolen. Of the four possibilities above, which one is associated with a litany of lawsuits on this very topic? Microsoft has what you would call an image problem, basically no sane person trusts it. When it comes to the next big thing, I personally would do everything in my power to keep it from knowing what I had planned, but if I needed a partner, Google would be on the short list. Google has been busily banking karma, China aside, and while I don't believe the 'don't be evil' slogan any more, I for one would put them in a completely different category than Microsoft.Google opened up the APIs to its services, and while there have been speedbumps along the way, it has created a really cool raft of limpet-like services that it can profit from, and you can too. It is a true win/win.Microsoft spotted this and opened up its APIs, a little, a while ago. The search related APIs program, as best as I can tell, died a horrible flaming death. Who in their right mind would build a company around this? The chances that it would be turned off arbitrarily, your ideas would be 'independently discovered' or things would change to facilitate something or someone else are just too high. I am sure there were a lot of high level meetings in Redmond where managers sincerely wondered why their largesse was spurned. The word here is trust, and it has nothing to do with Palladium, that isn't trust either.Microsoft is now eating its own dog food. It spent decades pushing people around, bullying, and earning every bit of its reputation. Now it needs to play kissy face, and promise you that it has turned over a new leaf. It would put it in writing, but its lawyers seem to be too busy fending off a few dozen more lawsuits, but that is the past, it promises. So, Microsoft is spending billions of dollars to fight off Google this coming year, and it is all for naught. The two things it needs, speed and friends, can't be bought. You can't throw engineers at a project and make it go faster. You can't throw the football team at a high school computer club and make friends.Without both speed and friends, you can't get a foothold in this new market. Microsoft has neither now, and only a small chance of hitting the speed goal. Two and a half years ago, I said it lost it, and it was a slow downhill from there. Now, it is game over. There is no remedy, they made their own bed and to mix metaphors, the chickens have come home to roost in it. It is time for a new maximum leader. µ
