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GVWonder
1 Comment
A Beautiful Mind: Microsoft over Google
"Google's search algorithms and programmers are amazing too, but these are things that can be copied by anyone with enough dollars"
If MSFT's $40+bn in cash and 24,000 engineers cannot unseat Google's dominance in the past 8 years, you are wildly underestimating the power of people and culture. It's not the proprietary data, it's the people who conceive, gather and analyze it.
The exact strategy you propose of expanding the size of the pie wasn't conceived (and won't be won) by MSFT. Yes, there's untapped value and market share in poorest 2/3's of the world, but let's face it, search and internet ads don't even move the needle for MSFT in terms of revenue, PC/server OS's and Office do. So, is MSFT going to give away the crown jewels of OS and Office to the poorest? Not a chance. And even if they did, how would they monetize it? Good luck up-selling a Bangladeshi kid using a restricted copy of Windows to Vista. MSFT has the same problem the pharmaceutical industry has - yeah, there's a huge market for Viagra in sub-Saharan Africa, but not at $4USD a pill.
Google's already in the business of giving away premium internet services for free to expand the pie they can monetize - blogger, customized search engines, Gmail, documents, business accounts, Open Social, Android, and eventually cloud computing, etc. Free equalizes the game internationally. MSFT, YHOO and AOL all try and nickle and dime users for premium internet services for a trickle of short term revenue but ultimately a losing long term strategy. As Google extends developers' reach into their services with strong, intuitive, open and free API's, they are in the prime position to be at the forefront of the next creative wave to expand the size of the internet pie, then capture, analyze and monetize it. Google's Nash-approved strategy is intent upon giving away more of what everyone else charges for as they are already best aligned to earn from it.
So, the Evil Empire of old came pre-installed (MSFT), but the new Evil Empire comes bearing free gifts (GOOG). ;-)