Introduction
Around the turn of the millennium, Microsoft was under siege from all directions. Rivals were nipping at its heels, offering alternatives to its most profitable products. Regulators were poking around, looking for signs of unethical activity. It was making me-too products, and using bundling to secure market advantage.
And now in 2015, Google is under siege from all directions. Rivals are… you can see where we're going with this, we're sure. Here are 10 reasons why Google today looks more and more like the Microsoft of then.
Its core business is under threat
Microsoft's cash cows were Windows, Office and server software, and in the days when almost every device had to run Windows and Office those cows generated a lot of cash.
However, the shift from PC to mobile and from paid software to free, such as Apple's free iOS and OS X updates and Google's Android, has threatened that. This is why Windows 10 is free in the hope of boosting market share and Office as a service, not just a desktop app.
For Google, the cash cow is ads – and the threat is the rise of ad-blocking.
Google's partners don't make much money
You can blame laughably thin profit margins for the bloatware on cheap PCs – some OEMs are operating on truly microscopic margins in a market of me-too products. Android OEMs are beginning to understand that feeling, and with the exception of Samsung, the Android market is looking a lot like the PC market of old with endless me-too devices competing for our attention.
Some OEMs, such as HTC and LG, have balance sheets that make hardened accountants weep, and their glory days seem rather distant now…
It's got a reputation for malware
Windows today has very little relation to, say, Windows XP in terms of security – but the popular perception is still that Windows means viruses and other unpleasantness while OS X is shiny, safe and secure.
Exactly the same thing has been happening with Android, where despite Google's best efforts all kinds of poor quality apps continue to thrive. Google's Bouncer technology is supposed to spot malware and prevent it from entering the Play Store, but at the time of writing yet another new malicious app – Brain Test – has been downloaded between 200,000 and 1 million times.
It's almost a monopoly
At its peak, Windows XP was used by more than 80% of computer users – and at one point Microsoft's Internet Explorer had 97% market share in web browsing. That's not quite a monopoly, but it did give Microsoft the ability to use its enormity to push its own products – for example by making Internet Explorer the default browser in Windows.
Google has nearly 70% market share in search (it's in the high nineties in Europe) and, it's alleged, may have given undue prominence to its own products and services in search results.
Google is aggressively pushing its own products
We mentioned Internet Explorer in the last slide – Microsoft's bundling of that in every copy of Windows effectively killed Netscape, and of course it has also bundled other products such as The Windows Network, MSN Messenger, SkyDrive/OneDrive and so on.
Pick up any Google-approved Android phone and you'll see the Google Play Store, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Hangouts, Google Chrome, Google Play Music, Google Now… if you don't want to use Google's many services, Android phones aren't much fun.