Is Google the New Microsoft?

ericjones12398 writes "Google's come up with its solution for Dropbox: If you can't buy 'em, copy 'em. The search engine and online advertising giant replaced its popular Google Docs service with Google Drive, a cloud computing storage service designed to directly compete with start up Dropbox. This raises the question, has Google become the new Microsoft? Us ancient folk who remember the 1990s and the Microsoft anti-trust trial can certainly notice some parallels. A big, dare we say monolithic, company doesn't bother innovating on its own. It just waits for other companies to innovate, makes some changes for legally significant distinctions and enters into competition with the innovator. Sound familiar?

Comments

Since Google wasn't the first search engine

[hsmith]

They just stole from Excite?

They stole email from hotmail?

Please, on a site that bitches about patents blocking innovation we are bitching about a company seeing an idea and building their own now?

Re:Since Google wasn't the first search engine

[fish waffle]

Yes, even their Search Engine wasn't really that novel.

Actually it was. Well, not in technology but in presentation. While AltaVista and Yahoo were busily making their results load slower and slower, burdened with popups, animations, and ever-encroaching side, top and bottom bars full of ads, google offered a greatly simplified presentation---one well-contained banner ad at the top, and maybe a couple, well-identified sponsored results. The result was extremely usable when the industry trend was in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, they have since begun a slow amble down the same path as past search engines, not necessarily purely in ad density, but nevertheless packing more and more useless crap and visual bling into the search results. An essential difference, however, is that despite having bloated up the loading of results with dozens of ajax callbacks, they've invested in an extensive and truly impressive infrastructure that can keep up with the weighty result pages they end up creating. At least so far.

That depends...

[MoonBuggy]

Are Google enforcing proprietary formats, bundling products to the detriment of their competition, and 'reinterpreting' standards such that third party options no longer interoperate properly? Although MS have been forced to improve more recently, I think that style of business was always the main problem that people had with them. Throwing another option into the marketplace without any element of coercion is fine by me, even if it is just a copy - genuine competition keeps everyone on their toes.

Re:Let's just say

[AliasMarlowe]

Google is not yet in Microsoft's league of indecency. Microsoft, just to remind you, is a convicted abusive monopolist. Google has not reached monopoly status anywhere significant. Some of us are keeping our eyes open, and still recognize the difference between a human (Google) and a pig (Microsoft).

If Google's changes are trivial, are DropBox's?

[YesIAmAScript]

Come on, let's not overromanticize DropBox here. They didn't invent the online storage business either. There were several companies in it during the .com boom, even Apple got into it before DropBox (and back out).

DropBox entered into a business which is less a business dependent on client software but more on network infrastructure, something Google excels at.

So just to ask, when was Google the first into a market? Not search. Not ads. Not mail. Not voice (they bought Grand Central).

They're the same as they ever were. They aren't first, but sometimes they do a better job or change up the business model.

Re:Let's just say

[Rob Y.]

Not to mention that, in Google's case, they came to prominence through some real innovation. Microsoft borrowed an OS, scammed IBM, copied WordPerfect, strong-armed OEMs into bundling their apps with the OS, lied to the DOJ, etc. Google came up with an innovative way to monetize the internet without ruining it, and so far they haven't strayed too far afield.

Now that Google's a public company, though, their 'Don't Be Evil' ethic is harder to square with Wall Street's poisonous demand for increasing stock prices at all costs. So sure, we ought to be wary, but I think Google's actually trying to compete as fairly as possible. And I don't think it's Dropbox they're cloning. They have this little competitor named Microsoft that would like nothing more than to neutralize their business model by giving away its own Dropbox clone - not to mention patent suits (and spending billions cloning Google's primary business), etc. Remember 'suck the air out' of your competitors business model? That was a Microsoft expression.

Re:Let's just say

[Katakaa]

Google has not really done any innovation after their search engine and advertising platform. Everything else they have bought off from other startups. Google Maps and Earth come from KeyHole Inc.. YouTube was its own startup before Google bought them, just like Android was too. Chrome is based on work done by Apple. Orkut was bought. Hell, their whole business depends on using other peoples content.

The point being, Google has really left themselves go after the one initial project the founders did at university. Which is fine I guess, but people keep believing they are some kind of innovative company. They are not. Even Microsoft is more that than Google, as they have the largest R&D center on planet, Microsoft Research.

Re:Let's just say

[dzfoo]

As a webmail client, yes. But webmail clients in general still lack the features we used to have with advanced native mail clients back in the late 1990s, or are just getting up to parity.

Google's insistence of reimplementing every single speciallized software technology that we already have, as an HTTP service running on a generalized web platform, may be technically interesting and very clever, but hardly innovating.

        dZ.

Re:Let's just say

[Katakaa]

I agree completely. Gmail was not innovative. It might had worked better than Yahoo or Hotmail at the time, but even then actual email clients were way better. I personally loved to use Eudora. It's sad that they changed it to Thunderbird based code, as it's just not the same. However to this date I still use desktop email client and it's much better. Websites are fine for things like Slashdot etc, but they just cannot replace native applications.

Re:Let's just say

[boaworm]

As a webmail client, yes. But webmail clients in general still lack the features we used to have with advanced native mail clients back in the late 1990s, or are just getting up to parity.

Google's insistence of reimplementing every single speciallized software technology that we already have, as an HTTP service running on a generalized web platform, may be technically interesting and very clever, but hardly innovating.

        dZ.

Sounds a bit like Apple. Many of their great successes were just improvements on existing concepts. However they were the first to produce a great product of said concept. There were loads of 32mb mp3 players out there from many vendors when apple came along with a much-more-expensive 5GB iPod that allowed you to carry around more than 8 songs. Same with the tablet, Microsoft and others envisioned it years before the iPad, however it wasnt until the iPad that it became a good product people wanted to buy.