Google, Microsoft, Antitrust Excitement
February 25, 2010
Google is finding its Maserati’s Quattroporte braks malfunctioning. Friction is good when you need to stop, not so good if you want to drive as fast as you want. Who stepped on the brakes?
TechCrunch’s write up “EU Opens Antitrust Investigation into Google. Microsoft’s Finderprints Are Everywhere” suggests that Redmond has opened the Quattroporte’s bonnet and fiddled the brakes. The UK’s newspaper Telegraph’s “Google Under Investigation for Alleged Breach of EU Competition Rules” also mentioned Microsoft. The passage was:
The Commission’s action marks the latest round in the increasingly acrimonious battle between Google and Microsoft which senior Google sources accuse of waging a “lobbying campaign” against the Californian firm.
Interesting. The firm’s are now tossing legal snowballs at one another.
One consequence of a Hele-Shaw configuration and boundary condidtions. Translation: cracks, gentle reader, cracks. Source: http://www.spaceflight.esa.int/users/fluids/cimex3.jpg
My view:
- If you cannot defeat another firm with marketing or technology, why not give the legal eagles a chance? Google, as I pointed out in my The Google Legacy (Infonortics 2005) is vulnerable to legal action. My question, “Why did Microsoft, if the allegation in the comment is accurate, wait until Google’s lead is the digital equivalent of the Grand Canyon?”
- Will the EU be able to reverse the Google seepage into the EU’s member nations? It is one thing to tell a government worker not to use Google, and it is quite another to get people to break a habit. In some countries, Google’s shae of the search market is at 90 percent; for example, Denmark and Germany.
- Can Google’s management handle another distraction? I pointed to a write up that used the word “screwup” to describe Google’s first nine weeks of 2010. I have been tracking the Google since 2002 when a big outfit paid me to figure out if the Google technology was any good. In that eight year span, I believe the PCWorld article’s use of the word “screwup” in a headline referring to Google was a first. If the write up is correct, Google’s zonky management style may be at a boundary condition.
In short, boundary conditions are exciting places, and Google may be entering one. Another attribute of the boundary is that it is unstable. Instablity often creates opportunity. Instatiliby can also lead to a sudden phase change; for instance, a break up.
So, excitement.
Stephen E Arnold, February 25, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Since I mentioned a math concept (boundary condition), I will report non-payment to NASA. This outfit understands boundary conditions upon shuttle re-entry.
Comments
One Response to “Google, Microsoft, Antitrust Excitement”
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In regards to section 3 of your views, I think there have been a few screw-ups at Google this year, the most notable one was the release of Buzz which was initially handled rather poorly, but to Google’s credit was quickly rectified.
Whether it was hubris, rush to get to market, ignorance, a combination of all three, and/or other factors we don’t know about, we will probably never know. I do remember a Googler saying on an episode of Cranky Geeks that all projects went through some sort of “don’t be evil” review prior to release, and that anyone involved in the project could challenge the project on those grounds (which I think is a great thing,) however clearly this process failed rather badly here.