Cringely Misses The Point on Google and Microsoft Battle

Cringely (in NY Times) suggests that Google has no interest in becoming the browser and OS of choice, since most people use Windows and IE, where most Google searches originate. Is he smoking something?

Op-Ed Contributor - Chrome vs. Bing vs. You and Me - NYTimes.com.

The vast majority of Google searches are, of course, done on PCs running Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. It is not in Google’s real interest to displace these products, which have facilitated so much of its success. Chrome products are given away, so they bring in no revenue for Google, and they don’t even provide a better search or advertising experience for their users, the company admits. So why does Google even bother?

That’s like McDonalds saying it has no incentive to displace home cooking because most people decide to eat McDonalds when at home. The two don’t line up.

Google has every incentive to move search — and other functionality — out of Microsoft products and into Google products. In particular, the future of coordinated work — where Google Apps are pointed — is closely linked there. Maybe Cringely can’t think past a time when Windows and IE are the shiznat, and companies are moving past the pre-web underpinnings of today’s OS’s.

But he doesn’t even suggest that search might change shape, and Google wants to be the one doing it.

They say that generals are always prepared to fight the last war, and Cringely sounds like someone ready to diagram how the last era’s war might play out again, with Microsoft having the dominant position on the desktop. But when the field has changed, and there is no desktop, what then?