Google, Gates, the power struggle

fortune.com has a recent article, "GATES VS. GOOGLE", where columnist Fred Vogelstein writes that Google "has morphed into a software company and is emerging as a major threat to Microsoft's dominance." Microsoft herein has to assert itself as the influential giant entity that it is.

Among my friends at my engineering-dominated university, Poly, Google has become a hot commodity. We don't realize it now that practically anyone with a computer and a connection can get a gmail account, but several months ago when it came out, it was hardly mainstream. The social engineers at Google found that they could build popularity in their product by simply making it unreachable. Even by then Google was the only search engine you would cite if you wished a peer to appreciate that 'yes, you too were tech savvy.' And the creators of Windows have to put up with this.

Myself in the business of looking for a job, I would like to extend an appreciation for this high up power struggle. In the words of Tyler Durden, "We're the middle children of history, man--no purpose or place. We have no great war. No great depression. Our great war's a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. " (grabbed here) But now, our great war is in front of us, being staged on a net bigger than Spidey can cook up. And Google is able to battle without requiring the users that make it popular to pay up. Microsoft does have a $40 billion revenue, but this is "thanks to its core Windows, Office, and server products", as mentioned in the former article.

Google Ads has tapped into the web advertising industry, much more like public television broadcasters tap media providers for money for airtime.

Let's just appreciate what we are part of, and hope that some of us will be lucky enough to really participate on the front lines on staff. Hey, if Microsoft is now second best, it just makes it slightly easier to jump on the production team that is still one of the world's highest grossing. In the tech locker rooms in universities and internet lounges, you can still give the softies verbal downplay for their sub par [free] products, but you can't deny that they still have been extremely successful. But will Google top that market share arse?