“Google (GOOG) looks a lot more vulnerable to the accusation that it’s become the new Microsoft (MSFT) today compared to even a year ago,” Eric Jackson writes for Forbes.
“Several people have said that Google’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have sought to build their company so that it wouldn’t make the mistakes that Microsoft did in the 1990s,” Jackson writes. “Well, surprise, Google today seems a heck of a lot similar to where Microsoft was right in 1999 – the year after Google was founded.”
Here are 7 similarities:
1. They have the same number of employees as Microsoft did in 1999
2. Anti-trust fears
3. Small ankle-biter competitors in plain sight
4. Google has about the same annual net income today that Microsoft did in 1999
5. However, unfortunately for Google, future revenue growth doesn’t equal future stock growth
6. Microsoft hadn’t yet paid a dividend then, just like Google but both had too much cash to be able to reinvest
7. The Google co-founders are 38 today
Read more about each of the 7 points listed above in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: These go to eleven (at least):
8. Their sense of entitlement couldn’t be more misplaced
9. They routinely claim to be doing one thing while clearly doing another
10. They try and fail to rewrite history
11. They make inferior, tasteless knockoffs of Apple products
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Motiv” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Google co-founder Sergey Brin: Apple a threat to Internet freedom – April 16, 2012
Google’s Larry Page: Steve Jobs’ fury over Android was ‘for show’ – April 4, 2012
James Whittaker: Why I left Google – March 14, 2012
What is up with Eric Schmidt’s revisionist history of his relationship with Steve Jobs? – October 14, 2011
Google’s attempt to put more wood behind less arrows and shoot for the sky for Apple’s space obviously came up short when the arrows landed in turd where Microsoft lay sprawled against the brown stuff.
Do no evil = do everything evil and that starts by stealing IP.
Search is the only service I use from Google and that is what they should stick to.
I won’t use it. I sleep better at night. Bastards!
12. They’re both utterly laughable to anyone but their loyalists
I know someone who LOVES apple (like the rest of us) and when asked, she puts her apple stickers on non apple products to make it SEEM as if they’re apples.
Oh, I’ve done that at Best Buy sometimes, covering all those badges on laptop palm rests on no-name laptops.
The most fun thing I’ve done is walked into a sony store, and pulled up the apple home page on all the laptop browsers.
XD It left some pretty confused customers.
12. Both headed at one time or another by a mole-like thieving weasel and/or inept monkey.
13. Do know evil.
12. Google’s into crawlers lately, Brin shot his mouth off about it. Microsoft introduced a net crawler in Windows ME in 1999.
13. Both companies make people’s skin crawl to the same degree.
+1 for MDN Take:
8. Their sense of entitlement couldn’t be more misplaced
9. They routinely claim to be doing one thing while clearly doing another
10. They try and fail to rewrite history
11. They make inferior, tasteless knockoffs of Apple products
another similarity : ballmer SIZE.
Dvorak has an (unintentionally) funny article on Google acting as a tech ‘start up’
Dvorak:
“I know one problem Google has: weight gain.
There is not one person I have seen go to work for Google who has not put on a lot of pounds from all the free food”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-close-the-cafes-sell-the-jets-2012-04-13
The Army give you free food as well.
I live near a giant naval base.
the navy ships usually has lots of food to keep the sailors happy on long voyages (just like cruise ships I guess). The marine types are very fit but the normal navy guys sometimes look like pudgy penguins… (sorry navy folks but it’s true, I see them everyday… ).
still I don’t think military food is as good as the high class food outlets (according to Dvorak “I’m talking about multiple massive food courts producing some of the finest corporate food I’ve ever seen — all you can eat every day, for free” ) that Google seems to have
N+1. They use money earned using a monopoly to invade other markets with random low quality products
Google is in a much worse position. MS has software that is both a cash cow and a de facto standard (e.g., getting business to switch off of office will be about as easy as getting everyone in china to start speaking spanish). What does Google have that of similar value and permanence? I would at least suggest that they try some extravagant, potentially useful, and tangible investment like MS did with xBox.
I had to read this at dinner time. I think I’m gonna hurl.
:-Q********
Yes but Microsoft DID NOT give us cool things like Google Maps & Google Earth (I know they bought it but they still brought it to the masses and evolved it), Translator etc.