Abstract:
The battle between Microsoft and Google will shape how our society makes use of technology, computing, and information. It will determine which firm will shape and control the future of computing, and ultimately profit from it. This face-off pits a world of computing which the operating system serves as the centerpiece of computing capabilities delivered on a computer, against a new one in which the network delivers information and computational applications to many different devices. Microsoft's dominance of the existing world is threatened by Google and other firms whose technologies make the operating system dispensable. Simultaneously, Google has demonstrated search advertising as the place to make big profits on the Internet, making it imperative for Microsoft to challenge Google's dominance in this arena.