Why Google Scares Bill Gates

[moneoa]

"This is a Lengthy article but a good one if you invest the time to read it ~Bryan"

Bill Gates is on a mission to build a Google killer. What got him so riled? The darling of search is moving into software—and that's Microsoft's turf.

Microsoft was already months into A massive project aimed at taking down Google when the truth began to dawn on Bill Gates. It was December 2003. He was poking around on the Google company website and came across a help-wanted page with descriptions of all the open jobs at Google. Why, he wondered, were the qualifications for so many of them identical to Microsoft job specs?

Google was a web search business, yet here on the screen were postings for engineers with backgrounds that had nothing to do with search and everything to do with Microsoft's core business—people trained in things like operating-system design, compiler optimization, and distributed-systems architecture. Gates wondered whether Microsoft might be facing much more than a war in search. An e-mail he sent to a handful of execs that day said, in effect, "We have to watch these guys. It looks like they are building something to compete with us."

He sure got that right. Today Google isn't just a hugely successful search engine; it has morphed into a software company and is emerging as a major threat to Microsoft's dominance. You can use Google software with any Internet browser to search the web and your desktop for just about anything; send and store up to two gigabytes of e-mail via Gmail (Hotmail, Microsoft's rival free e-mail service, offers 250 megabytes, a fraction of that); manage, edit, and send digital photographs using Google's Picasa software, easily the best PC photo software out there; and, through Google's Blogger, create, post online, and print formatted documents—all without applications from Microsoft.

While Google was launching those products—all of them free—Microsoft has been trying in vain to catch up in search. It has spent about $150 million on its search project, code-named Underdog. But Google and lately Yahoo keep leaping ahead with innovations like local-area search complete with maps and satellite photos, ways to search inside a video file, and search designed for cellphones.

Simply put, Google has become a new kind of foe, and that's what has Gates so riled. It has combined software innovation with a brand-new Internet business model—and it wounds Gates' pride that he didn't get there first. Since Google doesn't sell its search products (it makes its money from the ads that accompany its search results), Microsoft can't muscle it out of the marketplace the way it did rivals like Netscape. But what really bothers Gates is that Google is gaining the ability to attack the very core of Microsoft's franchise—control over what users do first when they turn on their computers.

Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt all say that any talk about supplanting Microsoft is ludicrous. But the idea that Google will one day marginalize Microsoft's operating system and bypass Windows applications is already starting to become reality. The most paranoid people at Microsoft even think "Google Office" is inevitable. Google is taking over operating system features too, like desktop search. There are fewer uses for the start button in Windows now that Google's desktop search can locate any program, document, photo, music file, or e-mail on a computer.

All of which helps explain why inside Microsoft, the battle with Google has become far more than a fight over search: It's a certifiable grudge match for king of the hill in high tech. "Google is interesting not just because of web search, but because they're going to try to take that and use it to get into other parts of software," says Gates as he leans forward in his chair, his body coiled as if he could spring to his feet at any second. "If all there was was search, you really shouldn't care so much about it. It's because they are a software company," he says. "In that sense," he adds later, "they are more like us than anyone else we have ever competed with."

Though CEO Steve Ballmer has been boss for five years, Gates, who is chairman and chief software architect, is leading the charge against Google. Forced to watch Google's stock soar the way Microsoft's used to, and Brin and Page enjoy their roles as tech's new rock stars, Gates brings to the fight a ferocity that nobody has seen since the Netscape war a decade ago. Their popularity gets under his skin. "There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," he says sarcastically, suggesting that Google is nothing more than the latest fad, adding, "At least they know to wear black."

Read it @ Fortune<------Link

[ferrarimodena360]

good read

ipod scares ms
google scares ms
opera scares
zonealarm scares
norton scares
lotus scares
java scares

anything that is successful scares him

i like following ms products though
XP
WME (Windows Media Encoder)

Edit:
Dang i thought winrar is windows rar

[REDO]

ummm winrar is not microsoft... it is from rarsoft...

[.:sp00ky:.]

winrar??? has nothing to do with MS.

[Christoph]

I hate winrar

[Broccoli]

I like google.

[PiraSoftCORP]

maybe bill took a look at this !!!
http://oak.psych.gatech.edu/~epic/

[Afn]

If Google creates a better OS platform than Microsoft, the world will be a better place. Google has market capitalization that most companies dream about. Let's see what they do with it.

[Afn]

Microsoft Excel is excellent - but every other piece of software has major competitors. competitors who are only prevented from destroying MS Office because of file import issues as Microsoft releases new versions.

peace.

Microsoft, IBM and other large corporations can play the patent and intelectual property real estate game. They create patents for technology, and years later when a functional implementation is created by another corporation, small business or individual, they litigate to prevent competition, stop innovation and in rare cases to negotiate rights and buyout.... and the technology never sees commercial or consumer reality.

We are about 10 years away from supercomputers on our desktops and 15 to 20 years away from self programming software.

[Abyss00]

It has combined software innovation with a brand-new Internet business model—and it wounds Gates' pride that he didn't get there first.

Wow, Gates must have some pretty wounded pride. Has M$ ever even once got there first when it came to software innovation? Buying others out, stealing them blind, or blatantly copying he is a shining example, but innovation???

Linux, the free operating system that Gates once scoffed at, is fighting Microsoft for share in both the server and desktop markets, forcing the company to do the unthinkable: offer customer discounts.

ROFL
That line is priceless.

Plus, the recently released Firefox browser, which can be downloaded free, has forced Gates to reconstitute an Internet Explorer development team.

This article is just too good. LOL

[deshman]

simply put.....G00GL3 is teh winZ!!!1

[Brycen257]

As Abyss00 pointed out, when has Microsoft ever been the leader in innovation ? Its been consistently true that Microsoft has made some good products but in most cases they have stolen, appropiated or copied the designs
and concepts of others and then promoted them as their own . If we had to rely on Bill Gates and company for innovation, we would probably all still be working on the latest edition of the commodore 64.

If Google is able to humble or embarrass Microsoft by producing better software , then I say Go Google, More Power to Google. Google all the way. Google Rocks !!!!!! I won't even try to be impartial in any feud between Microsoft and Google . I have far more faith in the products of Google than I do the products of
Microsoft . Look at the pathetic record of Microsoft in updating and improving Internet Explorer . They failed to make any updates or any attempt at improving this browser for 3-4 years . Only when Mozilla Firefox and Opera started to attract a great deal of attention did they actually pay any attention to the matter at all. Sorry, Bill and company, you missed the boat on this and many others.

Just wait until Google comes out with Google Instant Messenger,Google Media Player,Google TV,Google Server
2006 and the Google portable celphone with e-mail program , games and coffee maker Hey you never know.
Long live Google!!!!! :bom:

[moneoa]

As Abyss00 pointed out, when has Microsoft ever been the leader in innovation ? Its been consistently true that Microsoft has made some good products but in most cases they have stolen, appropiated or copied the designs
and concepts of others and then promoted them as their own . If we had to rely on Bill Gates and company for innovation, we would probably all still be working on the latest edition of the commodore 64.

If Google is able to humble or embarrass Microsoft by producing better software , then I say Go Google, More Power to Google. Google all the way. Google Rocks !!!!!! I won't even try to be impartial in any feud between Microsoft and Google . I have far more faith in the products of Google than I do the products of
Microsoft . Look at the pathetic record of Microsoft in updating and improving Internet Explorer . They failed to make any updates or any attempt at improving this browser for 3-4 years . Only when Mozilla Firefox and Opera started to attract a great deal of attention did they actually pay any attention to the matter at all. Sorry, Bill and company, you missed the boat on this and many others.

Just wait until Google comes out with Google Instant Messenger,Google Media Player,Google TV,Google Server
2006 and the Google portable celphone with e-mail program , games and coffee maker Hey you never know.
Long live Google!!!!! :bom:

lol you realise replacing one monopoly with another does nothing to fix the problems stemming from the monopoly in the first place.

Google is cool but I dont want them taking over from microsoft in every little aspect of my PC.

[ducttapeBigSexy]

lol you realise replacing one monopoly with another does nothing to fix the problems stemming from the monopoly in the first place.

Google is cool but I dont want them taking over from microsoft in every little aspect of my PC.

Actually, I agree with you 100% - more monopolies isn't the answer - but, any competition is a good thing. I'd rooting for Google in this one - I doubt they'll ever completely topple Microsoft, but at the very least they'll force Microsoft to actually do some work for once. Which means better products for everyone, whether it be from Google or Microsoft :)

[Potato]

It's kind of neat to think of Microsoft actually 'afraid'... it means they think they have competition.