Google is Learning From Microsoft’s Mistakes (Premium)

While most people think of Google as the gateway to the Internet, I view the firm in a different light.

That is, I see Google as nothing less than the next Microsoft. And while Microsoft was hellbent on not becoming the next IBM, Google, in turn, is very happy to become the next Microsoft. With one difference: It is righting the mistakes that initiated Microsoft's fall from the top.

And let's be clear: Google is already much, much bigger than Microsoft. No, not from a financial perspective, although that is only a matter of time. What I mean is that Google is bigger than Microsoft: A bigger part of our collective lives.

It wasn't that long ago that the notion of "a computer on every desk" was seen as visionary, and Microsoft's Bill Gates rode that mantra to great success in the 1990s. But Microsoft and Gates can now more correctly be seen as far too conservative. And today, the notion of computers on desks is as antiquated as rotary phones or cassette tape players.

Google's vision is far more vast, far more all-encompassing. And while I have no particular interest in the search engine and advertising juggernaut that drives all of Google's other efforts, I am very much interested in what the search giant does with all that money.

Which is this: Create a growing family of online services aimed at both businesses and consumers, backed by high-quality mobile and web apps that run on all devices. When Microsoft ruled the world, it focused solely on its dominant role in the PC market. As Google has risen to displace Microsoft, it is focusing on a much bigger market: The entire world.

Microsoft has tried to follow Google by releasing and updating its own online services and mobile apps. And it still sees some ongoing success with businesses, in particular, though it's unclear today whether that is mostly inertia or deserved.

But Google has moved more aggressively. And as interested as I am in the company's unique consumer wares---and there are tons of it---I am even more focused on how it has pushed further and further into Microsoft's core business markets. Google is like a cancer, and I mean that dispassionately. It simply cannot---will not---be stopped. It is what Microsoft was.

Remember that Microsoft?

Before I started my current career in the mid-1990s, I had determined that I needed to get out of my dead-end job and embrace my enthusiasm for technology. At that time, it was clear that this meant I would be a software developer, and given the times, that meant I should go back to school for formal training for this future.

The only question I faced was simple and easily answered: Would I embrace the PC, which I disdained for its lackluster MS-DOS and Windows 3.x environments of the day, or would I turn to the Mac, a failing platform for which I had far more respect?

I made the pragmatic choice, the right choice, and I embraced the PC. And that meant figuring out Windows and, worse, Microsoft.

But it was go...