The Google Quandary

What MIX07 won't be is the coming out party for Microsoft's Web services platform. As sensible a venue as MIX07 might appear to be—after all, Microsoft Web services architect Ray Ozzie will be giving a keynote—indicators point to more focus on development tools than anything else.

As it should be. The Visual Studio 'Orcas' beta was released last week, Expression Studio's official release is imminent and the Silverlight beta is scheduled for release at MIX07. Microsoft might say something about its Web services platform, but the big shebang will come later. For this event, Microsoft's bag of developer goodies is already plenty big.

MIX is where Microsoft meets, greets and looks to beat back the Web platform (aka, Web 2.0). The tools will be very much about embracing the Web, as long as Microsoft technologies, such as XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language), are core. .Net 3.5 will be the centerpiece of the larger Web services strategy, even as Microsoft talks Web standards with Expression. Microsoft also will position its technologies as best of breed for delivering services in the "cloud," which is where Google and other Web platform companies have gained an early lead.

Living in Google's Shadow
Google will be a big presence at the event, even for its absence. Recent news has got to be causing jitters in Redmond, and surely some developers will ask about Google's moves, too.

Yesterday, market research firm Millward Brown's BRANDZ survey (PDF) ranked Google as the No. 1 brand, ahead of Coca-Cola, GE and (gulp) Microsoft.

Last week, Google preannounced a Web-based presentation program that presumably would compete with PowerPoint. Two days later, Google announced that it would be acquiring Marratech's videoconferencing software.

The Google tool set: word processor, spreadsheet, presentation application, e-mail, calendaring and address book, instant messenger and online collaboration. It's as if Google is building services in the cloud based on concepts ripped from the pages of Microsoft's abandoned HailStorm (aka .Net My Web Services) playbook, which was circa 2000.

While Google appears to be assembling an Office killer, that's not the objective. Google isn't directly competing with Office as might be the initial assumption. Google's goal is way bigger than Microsoft.

Contrary to popular convention, Google is not a media company like AOL or Yahoo. Nor is Google a search company. Search is a means to an end, and the end is information. Google is an information company that monetizes information by way of paid search and advertising. Google's online suite, like the rest of its products, is about providing information creation tools around which the company generates revenue, with contextual search being the major means.

All of this stuff is necessary for two other reasons: Google is looking to monetize more content (providing creation tools is one way to get it); and search isn't sticky. Users can switch search engines by changing the URL. By contrast, Microsoft software is very sticky: Switching products is much harder. Google seeks more stickiness, too, which is one major reason for its rapid release of new applications over the last 24 months or so.

Where those sticky applications reside is a major difference. For Microsoft, the majority are on the desktop, while Google keeps most of its applications and the data they produce online, in the cloud. The promise of the Web platform is access anytime, anywhere and on anything.

The information, really none of which Google produces, is its marketable asset—providing meaningful access to the information and the means to profit from it.

Make Money Without Doing Evil?
As it's supposed to, Google's 10-point philosophy reveals much about the company's priorities. The term "search" is appears 20 times in the list and there are 13 instances of "information." But information is the topic of two of the 10 points, while search is the topic of none.

Again, Google is an information company, as clearly indicated by its intended $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick. The looming question: At what point could Google have too much control over information?

Perhaps Microsoft sees the DoubleClick buy as one potential tipping point to too much control.

In a statement issued last week, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said: "This proposed acquisition raises serious competition and privacy concerns in that it gives the Google DoubleClick combination unprecedented control in the delivery of online advertising, and access to a huge amount of consumer information by tracking what customers do online. We think this merger deserves close scrutiny from regulatory authorities to ensure a competitive online advertising market."

What's that saying that it takes one to know one? There may be no better commentator on a company's potential anticompetitive behavior than a convicted monopolist.

There's an irony in the fact that nearly a decade ago, Microsoft competitors and U.S. trustbusters warned that the company would become the gatekeeper to accessing the Internet. A gatekeeper may be in the making, but it's not Microsoft.

Google's sixth tenet is, "You can make money without doing evil." Can you, though, if you control so much information?

An Idle Microsoft Is Google's Buddy
As Google's informational success increases by pulling more services and data into the cloud, Microsoft must make its competitive response. But Microsoft hasn't exactly moved to the beat of Internet time, and goes to the wrong places. Monopoly behavior would be for Microsoft to make a play to protect the desktop. That is the way wrong approach, and the one chosen by Microsoft.

Microsoft's new development tools make up a good part of the right approach, but there is a big piece the company is missing: the server. The Web platform is succeeding and it's shifting computing and informational relevance from the desktop to the Internet. The outcome is inevitable, unless something else comes long. The Web platform will succeed.

Web services don't run in a vacuum. They use software, but on the server. That's where Microsoft can win at Web 2.0, by shiftng with computing and informational relevance to the server. No doubt, Microsoft's Web services platform is server- and database-based, as it would have to be. But the platform is taking too long to build and release, while Google just gains and gains.

Unsolicited advice: Microsoft should market the heck out of its server brands as being best-of-breed software delivering compelling Web 2.0 applications. On the front end, consumers should demand Microsoft-branded products like Silverlight. Microsoft can woo their enthusiasm by building broad brand awareness, which also would buy time to better build out the Web services platform.

Branding is everything in business. Apple and Google—heck, even IBM—understand this. From a marketing and branding perspective, infrastructure hardware and software is about as sexy as a pile of dirty diapers. Yet IBM has done a pretty good job of putting a human face on infrastructure hardware and software to the point where they're almost interesting. The IBM "Mean Streets" banner above is good example.

During the mid 1990s, Apple received almost weekly epitaphs. Now the brand is resurgent. If Apple can reinvent and reinvigorate, why can't Microsoft? MIX07 could be a starting place, where Microsoft could seize the message and kindle some fire under new brands for the Web 2.0 era and beyond. Google can be aggressive and appear nice because the brand is strong. Microsoft can try doing the right thing and be vilified because its brand is weaker. Awareness may be good, but not the feeling about the brand.

During the browser wars, Microsoft encouraged Web sites that supported Internet Explorer to put up an IE logo. The strategy had an effect of spreading the IE brand. Microsoft! Every site created using Expression tools, Visual Studio, Silverlight or some other Microsoft technology should carry your logo. Right, there is no Microsoft logo. You got to fix that.

Brand. Brand. Brand. That's the right starting point for beating back Google.

MIX07 team, can you Twitter that?

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• Digital Media Bundling 2.0, Microsoft Watch, April 16, 2007
• DoubleClick and Microsoft's Thrift Culture, Microsoft Watch, April 16, 2007
• Microsoft Changes Expression on MSDN, Microsoft Watch, April 3, 2007
• Live Search to Begin 'Incentive' Enterprise Trial, March 16, 2007
• Who Shot Windows Live?, Microsoft Watch, March 8, 2007
• Wanted: Dead or Live, Microsoft Watch, March 2, 2007
• What Is Microsoft's Services Platform?, Microsoft Watch, March 1, 2007
• March 'Orcas' CTP Shows Some Expression, Microsoft Watch, Feb. 28, 2007
• Ray Ozzie Speaks Out, Microsoft Watch, Feb. 27, 2007
• Ray Ozzie's 20 Questions, Microsoft Watch, Feb. 26, 2007
• Google and Long Tail Computing, Microsoft Watch, Feb. 22, 2007
• Ouch! You've Been Live Branded, Microsoft Watch, Feb. 2, 2007
• Microsoft's Expression Means What?, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 16, 2007
• Sorry, but Live Isn't Dead, Microsoft Watch, Dec. 12, 2006
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