Throwback: Not the Future We Want (Premium)

Ten years ago this week, I observed that the future of computing was in the cloud and that Google was outperforming Microsoft. This is interesting timing because, in my recent assessment of Microsoft’s more recent efforts for developers, I noted that it continues to push proprietary solutions instead of open source and open standards.

Here’s a look back at this editorial, which was published just after Google I/O 2010, along with some accompanying notes and commentary.
Three Screams and a Clod
Last week, I wrote a deliberately provocative commentary, Kickin' It In The Cloud, in which I described how Google's cloud computing mindshare vastly outperforms the company's cloud computing revenues. Put more succinctly, close to 99 percent of the almost $24 billion in revenues Google posted in 2009 is tied directly to advertising revenue on search results. This makes complaints about Microsoft's inability to expand beyond its core products seem somewhat humorous by comparison.
10 years later, Google has made some progress diversifying its revenues. In its most recently quarterly results, for example, the firm reported that 82 percent of its revenues had come from advertising.
Last week's reality check shouldn't obscure one simple fact, however. The future of computing is very clearly in the cloud--just ask Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who spent last week explaining that to the nation's top CEOs. And though Google has yet to establish a financially successful cloud computing product to rival the software dynasties Microsoft owns, its advertising revenues are hefty enough to finance numerous projects for decades to come. Like the Microsoft of 15 years ago, Google can keep trying and trying until it establishes a beachhead, all while keeping less well-funded competitors at bay. And my expectation is that, left unchecked, it will be successful at doing so.
The Microsoft of 2010 was quite different than today’s Microsoft, of course. But here’s a milestone to consider: Microsoft publicly released Azure, then called Windows Azure, on February 1, 2010, just three months before I wrote this. So it’s not coincidental that Ballmer was busy proselytizing this future then. And Office 365, the successor to Business Productivity Online Suite, would debut just a year later, in June 2011.
Not coincidentally, Google this past week held its third annual Google I/O conference, a developer-oriented show that, like Microsoft's PDC (Professional Developers Conference) and Apple's WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference), provides a revealing glimpse at where the company's platforms are heading. This show was fascinating for a number of reasons, but for me, it provided an interesting look at how Google views the world, and how its competitors--Microsoft among them--can hope to beat back this seemingly unstoppable force.

Here are the major business-oriented product and technology announcements Google made during this show, and how I feel Microsoft is ...

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