Google and MicrosoftBy now, everyone will have heard about Google’s plans to lay a nice fat multi-terabit optical cable across the Pacific Ocean.  Personally, I think this is great for both Google and their target market:  us.  But rather than discuss Google’s plan to take over the world while making it look like their really our friend (I’ll leave that to expert haters and people with more research time and resources on their hands), I’d rather talk about what this means for the future of Google’s target market … again, us.

Twenty years ago people looked at Microsoft the same way they do Google today.  Lots of companies and technologically savvy people were afraid of what this budding company of incredibly intelligent programmers with their strong-minded leaders would do to their perception of the world and, despite crying foul every time Microsoft did something right, these people would instead focus on the few mistakes made or put a bad spin on anything that they were jealous for not thinking of first.

That said, before the flames and hate mail starts pouring in, I’m not defending Microsoft, here.  I’m merely pointing out some similarities in the two companies when they reached 10 years in age.

Microsoft started out by offering an operating system they bought for next to nothing, and then went around to vendors telling them that they wanted MS-DOS.  Application developers learned how to program against this DOS platform and made quite a bit of money, while Microsoft made money right along with them.  Google has done the same with their incredible services and API.  We’ve learned how to program with the Google API, and some people have earned a nice chunk of change over the years.

Microsoft didn’t stop with operating systems, though.  They branched off into Operating Environments (Windows 1.0 through to WinME), other Operating Systems (WindowsNT to the current Vista), productivity software (Office, Money, etc.), games, development platforms, database engines … the list goes on and on, but it didn’t happen all overnight.  Instead, we had a love-hate relationship with Microsoft while wishing there were other options that were just as versatile.

The same can be said about Google.  They didn’t stop with their search engine.  They branched off into streaming video, satellite imagery, navigation systems, newsgroups, blog hosting, desktop applications, translation services … the list is just as extensive as Microsoft’s.  The biggest difference, though, is that most tech people love Google.

The two companies share many similarities, and the one I can appreciate the most is the opportunities they give to people who mistrust their services.

Microsoft haters flocked to the Mac or Linux in droves, allowing some incredible development and enhancements to blossom from both.  Where would Linux be today if it wasn’t for people mistrusting Microsoft so much in the last 15 years?  I’ll admit that Linux’s popularity and innovations are not 100% thanks to people who dislike Microsoft, but it’s certainly helped Linux claim a few percentage points of the OS market.

Now the same is being said about the all powerful Google.  They’ve ventured into so many areas that there are more people turning their backs on the G and working with lesser-known platforms, adding innovations and word-of-mouth to these services.  Several months ago there was a post in Wired about how the search engine market was fracturing (I wish I could find it again), and that these engines had to find new ways of attracting hits and gaining market share while fighting off newer engines such as ChaCha, KartOO, Quintura and Zuula.

Massive companies that dominate several markets aren’t always things to be feared.  They often breed misguided contempt, greed, jealousy and ego just enough that people start building newer solutions that meet or exceed the needs of people.  Heck, this is how Google got their start.  How many of us were exclusively using Yahoo search or Altavista in 1998?  How many of us still use those engines?  The same is said about operating systems.  How many of us were using Microsoft solutions in 1998, and how many of us now use other platforms?

Personally, I’m glad to hear that Google is buying up so many companies, laying so much cable, and venturing into markets such as wireless internet and cell phones with free services.  Eventually, this will piss off enough people in companies and online communities to come up with something even better and, at the end of the day, there will only be one real winner.

Us.