The Battleships of Microsoft have clearly set a course. They have left the Pearl Harbor of Vista like proportions. They are headed to Midway Island. Google is waiting, they have been island hopping from Dodgeball island to Grand Central Canal all throughout the wide open pacific. Gobbling up start-up web services and deploying squadrons of office apps in the clouds ready to swoop down with zero like precision.

Yes the WWII metaphor may get stretched a bit. But the glory days of Google are officially over. Microsoft now has the battle group intact and is heading to strike at the heart of Google. Based on the latest reports from WinHec and PDC 2008, I do not wish a Netscape massacre on any corporation but I see it coming and there is very little Google can do.

The last time this happened Bill Gates turned the battleships around at Windows 95, and used everything it had to crush the new web platform, the browser. It took control, in a matter of years and the rest is history. Despite Google's dominant positions in search and adwords these revenue streams can not and will not save Google from near destruction. Google had a chance, but it focused on pilot projects that while exciting and news worthy, can not be defended.

Apple will be the neutral benefactor here. It will sit back and watch. But more on Apple later. The real battleground theater will be to see Google's collapse.

It begins with people and not technologies. Jerry Yang (soon to be former CEO/founder of Yahoo) is vacating, and thus the door re-opens for Microsoft to take over at least some very valuable Yahoo properties. This will make Microsoft online ads and market reach very compelling. Certainly still not the size of eyeballs Google has. But Microsoft will continually undercut Google in price, as it did so easily with Netscape. Already they are using CashBack literally paying for advertisers and eyeballs...Though, it will never offer free adword placement, it can and will undercut Google as it has the desktop revenue streams and bankroll to shrink Google's profit margin. Expect leaner times in the lunch line at the GooglePlex in about 15 months if Microsoft gets ahold of Yahoo online properties. With the US already in recession, price will trump reach in many situations where a MicroHoo ad network will compare more favorably to Googles.

UPDATE UK Times Online: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article5258258.ece


Next, comes Azure, an online or cloud platform that when comparing the Azure / Silverlight / Dot Net platform API and tool set to the Google Gadget Tool set and API, is like comparing the explosive power of Orville Redenbachers Popcorn to the Bikini Island Atomic Bomb tests. Despite Google's headstart, the features available to a Google gadget is nothing to the reach and features of an online Microsoft Office Suite, online set of webservices, online suite of technologies including sync and storage. I mention Sync and Storage, that while Google does have some sync capabilities, it is closed with no clear reference API and still Google lacks a Storage play at this late date.

The attack is so massive that its hard to figure out which battle group will do the most damage. But ultimately, it will be Windows 7 and not Azure or Mesh or Windows Live intially. Windows 7 will be the Higgins landing vehicles that will guide the new PC user and old to web functionality and cloud services that Google will have no answer for. Why use Google Sync or Google Docs when all of that is already a click from the Windows 7 taskbar?

Safari will be the second in command, allowing Mac user faithfuls to access the Microsoft Cloud Juggernaut. Like iTunes on Windows sucks, Silverlight on Mac is not much better in comparison. My Safari browser has it, loads it, and runs it, but Microsoft keeps demanding I download it. to see content I already can see... Regardless, Microsoft will make and continue to support some Mac technologies to keep either regulators or critics away... Microsoft was planned this all along, from the day Ozzy took over technologies, and Silverlight was announced as "cross-platform"...

Instead, Google has played with a browser, played with a mobile OS, and played with some web content social tools like Jaiku and Dodgeball. Dodgeball and GrandCentral, as well as Jaiku, and Orkut have stagnated and still lack and major features to use across the web. Each has met competition from other vendors and have stagnated. Orkut is not Facebook or MySpace, despite having been under Googles watch, Jaiku despite being purchased months ago. Sits in private permanent beta.

It is very possible that these companies were bought for their human capital. Brain trusts in the technology field are very valuable. But regardless, without leadership with foresight, not much can change the battle lines that Google has drawn. And nothing they have done other than shore up their adword network, can protect them from the onslaught.


Google's announcement of "Friends Connect" based on Google's initiative of Open Social, remains stagnated also. There are no tools, no services, no new API examples for any of these products. And without developer extensibility, they remain transfixed in their post dotcom trajectories, unable to adapt or change. Microsoft has a social friends initiative it is rallying already. So stay tuned for that.. It is unclear how that will be deployed or used.  And yet Google has not released a single deployment of its Friends Connect system, looking and closing down Lively its failed 3D platform, the continue to misguide their core strengths and little will save them from their random lab experiments.

Why?

Nothing in the Google playbook can prevent Microsoft from generating billions from Windows 7. Nothing. But conversely, Microsoft was done everything to attack Googles revenue. Online Office, Upgrades to Windows Mobile, deep and rich developer tools for Cloud computing, online sync, storage, collaborate tool sets. And a slow and sometimes sad but steady improvements in online search.

Live Search, is still not my personal choice for search. But look at Live Maps, simply put, it online version is on par to Google Maps. Take a second look...You can save maps, create video journeys, create shapes that map square mileage, save/send, and add notes / links to destinations. Street views, birds eyeviews, and export to GPS and KML.. The tools work in Safari, Firefox, and IE.

Google owned this space, and in less than two years, Microsoft now has integrated PhotoSynth links into Live Maps.... When photosynth finally runs in silverlight on the Mac, Ladies and Gentlemen the battle of Midway will be over. If Silverlight takes up more marketshare, or if Microsoft strikes a balance of functionality between Silverlight and Web standard AJAX technologies. Rather than proprietary, IE only experiences or Windows only experiences as it has in the past, then Google has a very long march back to being simply an adword network based on search engine brand.

God help the web if Silverlight takes hold as Flash has. But with the help of Windows 7, there is not much to stop it... Silverlight provides the wedge API that enables developers to avoid the messy AJAX API that might not translate from website to website. Just as Flash avoids the limits of web graphic tricks inside the intricate javascript engines of multiple browsers, Silverlight will provide Microsoft with the same wedge to avoid Google API calls on location, search, and a plethora of other web dynamics that are Googles bread and butter.

I mention Silverlight, because it will extend the office functionality of offline apps to online world. Google office apps are basic. But if your Mac graphics guy and work with the marketing guys windows machines, with ribbons, and tons of fonts... And my wife can add events online with her Dell PC so my iMac will sync up to iPhone calendar. Good Night Google...

Nothing in the Google Phone stops Microsoft from updates to its Mobile Platform. Where as the iPhone has had a halo effect on the Mac platform. The jury is out if the Gphone is getting new "Google Users". It may be just attracting Google users to a phone. And, even if it does have a halo effect. What revenue does it derive? Google services are free. And can Google stave off an attack from Microsoft, Apple, Symbian, Blackberry, to create a sizeable revenue stream from 2.8 inch screen ads on the Gphone?

If current Google iPhone apps are a clue. Then the answer is no...

Google will not die or dissappear. It will not suffer the fate of Netscape. Its collapse will be a slow shrinking of all its "ideas" that seemed so grand while the Microsoft team retooled and regrouped.