Google is the New Microsoft

And all you Microsoft bashing Google fanboys don't realise it.

I'm not saying that Google is the new anti-competitive bully, though that might be true. My assertion here is that Google is the new writer of bland but universal applications that everybody will hate and complain about in a few years time.

History lesson. Microsoft beat everybody else back in the day by making their software hardware independent. Thus Microsoft succeeded while Apple, and everybody else, receded.

Fast forward 25 years and the web, through the web browser, is now a platform in its own right, capable of becoming the target of application development. Google is a leader in this new environment. Their recent release of several business applications extends that lead.

Problem is, who's going to use this sort of software for anything other than dabbling? Probably not many, and for good reason. Even though the web is enabling rich application development, it's still not rich enough to compete with applications designed to operate natively/locally to a computer. Therefore, Google has some neat technology, but it's essentially mediocre software that is unreliable (whether by the fault of the client or server) and has sketchy performance. Sound familiar?

Many critics have judged Microsoft pretty harshly, fair or not, for putting a lot of marginal software into the wild. Security of their OS software is notoriously bad, their applications are closed and features are added at a glacial pace. Concepts that are great, and deserve real kudos, get released but remain unimproved thereafter.

I see similar things happening with Google. Google releases application that are interesting and in some cases really fantastic (Gmail anyone?) but then they take forever to improve or finalize those applications. Google is becoming famous as the company that invented the perpetual "beta" release. Also, their focus on Adsense is driving their development in a single dimension. I see there being some attempt to diversify their revenue sources, but not a lot. Selling individual server boxen is not terribly profitable and I hear nothing of their other pay for use/service offerings as real drivers of growth.

I see Google trying to force everything to work a) on the web and b) with Adsense. Sounds like a pretty limiting and limited vision, similar to the limiting vision that has kept Microsoft from being a true driver of massive innovation.

(To be fair, Microsoft has done tremendous amounts of good work. My opinion is simply that they could have done more with themselves in the time they've been on top. WinFS, delayed Vista, multiplatform goodness, security neglect - these and more are areas that I feel have been dropped opportunities by MS.)

So that's it. Google will continue to rise, but in so doing it will try to fit everything into the Google mould/formula. It's inevitable, and it's already happening, and it's going to make Google look a lot like Microsoft in a few years.