History repeats itself as Google Outmuscles Microsoft

By Richard M. Sherwin…

Some industry wags have been bitching and moaning that Google has become the Microsoft of the new millennium. Just like Bill Gates and company, Google has either directly violated antitrust laws, controlling too much web based decision making in your home and business, and/or acting like organized crime in making sure you and your family or company is paying Google off even when you don’t know it.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah, the antitrust sub-committee ranking Republican, has said that Google has “cooked it” so its own products and services are give priority over those competing companies in the search business.

It was only 20 years or so ago, when Microsoft finally killed its arch rival in word processing, Word Perfect, and then unceremoniously also did in Managing Your Money without a whimper from the rival software makers because Bill Gates and Co. either stole portions of those popular programs or bundled similar programs with Windows so the competition couldn’t survive.

In interviews I did with Gates in the mid 80s and mid 90s, Bill didn’t deny he wanted his company’s products for businesses and consumers to be the best in class. In a diner next to the New York Daily News building during the first interview, he constantly asked me what my newspaper used in the way of software and what my family used. When I recited some programs he wasn’t familiar with, he immediately went to a pay phone and allegedly asked his business development executives if they were familiar with those products. He unabashedly asked me to talk to them with the assurance that I could be the first reporter to review them. My naïveté later would come back to haunt me when Word Perfect would become a back of the store almost discontinued product and Managing Your Money would magically become part of Microsoft’s home and business finance program.

And while Microsoft’s replacement programs for Word Perfect never even came close to its rivals…even today….do you know anyone using Word Perfect?

Now Google has quietly infiltrated your daily life with its ubiquitous browser and its operating system called Android and it has bought out so many companies in the past two years that it has made even Microsoft’s execs eyes gloss over.

Companies as large as Sony, Samsung and Motorola have to beg for the latest technology from Google. Smaller firms like Archos, Coby and Nextbook are even more at risk because they may never be able to get the best operating systems from Google for their products. “It’s arbitrary and capricious how Google decides what company gets what operating system. To make matters worse, Google promised we would get both in-house and outsourced support for their operating system if we agreed to a certain price. Then they backtracked. They not only didn’t give us support, they didn’t give us all the features promised,” said a senior executive with a New York based technology hardware company who asked not to be identified.

Ironically, Google was supposed to be open source, allowing companies, programmers and consumers free entry into their technology, enabling everyone to have equal access to the latest and greatest applications, features and benefits of Google-Android.

So I guess we have to wait for the next Microsoft and Google to come along. But this time nip it in the bud before it takes over the world.