• Google will help Microsoft get its groove back.

Not intentionally, of course. Microsoft seems to have been flailing in the face of huge shifts in the tech business, many of them led by Google. In November, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates issued his much-publicized "sea change" memo, calling for the troops to rally the way they did when Microsoft felt challenged by Netscape a decade ago.

"What runs Microsoft's engine is having a competitor stand up and moon them," says author Geoffrey Moore, whose new book is Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution. "Google is mooning them."

Now that that's official, we might see Microsoft back on the attack in '06. Unless Google does to Microsoft what Microsoft once did to Netscape. "The biggest problem for Microsoft is that Microsoft sells what Google gives away," Moore says, which hearkens back to the day when Netscape was selling what Microsoft could give away.

posted by issek @ 21:50