My friend Richard Brandt has an interesting piece speculating on how Microsoft can beat Google. He raises some persuasive points, or so it seems to me, although he omits the big one of changing leadership. I think Ray Ozzie is everything that Google leaders are not. He is one of the fountainheads of the concept of online collaboration and he seems to me to be extremely accessible by personality, something that you cannot say about the cloistered folk at Google's helm.
What I enjoyed most is that Richard is new to blogging and a while back, I wrote about how he was too soft on Google in his blog which he is using to write his book on Google. Since then, the blogosphere has changed his perspective and this post shows how far he has moved in a few short weeks.
It's funny, because I've been thinking about the little chips I keep seeing being taken out of Google's core competency. The amazing thing about them is that they became a search company when conventional wisdom said that search was a worthless category.
Google has managed to establish that search is, in fact, the most recent and enduring killer app to have evolved and now it is far from alone. Richard is right. Microsoft will never beat Google in that category, nor will Yahoo who has declared it wouldn't even try.
But the real action is in the myriad little chips being taken out of Google's armor. Maybe not today or tomorrow but someday sooner than they realize these little chips may become gaping wounds.
There is an advancing number of aggressive, popular little companies who are taking an increasing number of vertical thin slices from Google. There's Krugle, providing search for open source code; Riya who is emerging as a visual search engine, Kosmix with its interesting array of verticals that span from video games to health. I'm working with MusicIP that is doing some kickass stuff in music search, and today, I helped Alexander Castro get his Pluggd get ready for the upcoming Demo conference with a product that lets you search fr what you want in a podcast.
None of these companies alone alone good lay a glove on Google. But in the long run, this could be like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Gulliver could have squashed anyone of these insignificant little folk. But instead, he woke up from a blissful snooze to discovered himself hopelessly tied down.
