Ten guys in a garage in Cleveland
by Volker Weber
While everyone seems to focus on how Microsoft can beat Google or not, Andrew hits it:
What made Google a market defining company is their thinking and approach more than their product. Those guys do not take anything for granted. They don't do things a certain way because that's how its been done before. They really think about each process they take on and take a really hard distant look at what it is about that process that they can do differently. Until another group of leaders emerge with the technical savvy, the imagination, and the business sense those guys bring to the table in one tight package their lead is safe. When it does happen, it will come from another small company with bright individuals. It will not come from a mega corporation with committee meetings and strategy teams.
It reminds me of a post that Groove Network's Mike Helfrich once wrote:
Many years ago, IBM's Lou Gerstner briefed a group of us on the things he worries about most. At the top of the list was the "10 guys in a garage in Cleveland."
Comments
Well, to a certain extent that is probably true, but on the other hand, it's also risky and naive. Market power such as Microsoft's can buy out a lot of flexibility and brilliancy.
If MS deeply integrates a web search tool somewhere in Windows or Internet Explorer, many, many, many users will not bother to type www.google.com anymore and most likely it will be easy for MS to slightly modify IE in such a way that the Google bar won't work for some strange reason.
It would certainly not surprise me at all...
True enough Ragnar, but would that be innovation?
For enough money, they could just buy Google and have done with it. Still, that would hardly be making a market defining move.
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