Microsoft and Google have fundamentally different in their business models. Google uses Advertising and Search, with around 98% of their revenue comming from Advertising. Microsoft owns a monopoly on the Operating System business. Especially with the new Google Chrome OS that’s been recently announced, It really brings the question of their positions. Can Google really take Microsoft down? What kind of financial prowess, consumer brand loyalty or user lock-in does it really need to take on Microsoft?
Google is on much shakier territory. I could leave Google just by typing in “bing.com” or “yahoo.com” in the URL bar. Simple as that. Totally intuitive, something that (hopefully) nobody needs to call Tech Support to guide them. Typing 8 letters into the URL bar and pressing enter is all it takes to destroy the Google empire.
However, what about Microsoft. They own a monopoly on the Operating System market. How easy is it to install another operating system? Well, you need about 1-4GB of data for a modern OS, you need to either burn it or buy it from a store (I figure there are probably tons of tech support calls at this point), and then likely reconfigure BIOS, go through menus, fill out several forms and select the specific partition to install the OS to. This point is already unfathomable for a great majority of the userspace.
Google is very different from Microsoft, from their core business models. The Windows monopoly isn’t going anywhere in the near future. Google could be gone tomorrow.
True that! XD
That’s what Google says is their philosophy nowadays, anyhow. Trying to make it easy for people to leave. (Though when they force you to leave by banning you, Google Takeout no longer works.)