Back in May 2007, I had the great fortune to be in the audience when Steve Jobs and Bill Gates appeared live for the first time together, at The Wall Street Journal’s D Conference. It was a historic event.
During their conversation, Steve Jobs preferred to look forwards rather than backwards. “It’s all about what happens tomorrow,” he said. “So let’s go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday.”
Now he's got another chance to follow through.
Over the previous 20 years, Gates’s Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Jobs’s Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) have been such an adversarial double act that every move of one could often only be understood in terms of its impact on the other.
Today, however, the historic rivalry is on its last legs. Bipolarity has been replaced by multipolarity. The digital great-power landscape is so much more complex than it was two years ago that Microsoft and Apple might now be closer to being friends than enemies.
Think of what’s going on in technology in terms of traditional geo-politics. For 500 years, from the Middle Ages to the late 19th century, the hostility between England and France made the technology battles between Apple and Microsoft seem like a playground spat. Then, in the last part of the 19th century, Germany emerged, a virile new power slowly pushing those great old rivals, England and France, closer together. And then, in the 20th century, those two historic rivals fought two world wars together against Germany.
The equivalent of Germany in today’s technology great-power game is, of course, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). The new superpower from Mountain View has so dramatically reconstituted the entire balance of power in the technology industry that Apple and Microsoft are slowly, but surely, discovering that they might, after all this time, actually be allies.
In 2005, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO said, "Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards." He couldn’t have been more wrong. Today, Microsoft is so obsessed with Google’s threat as a rival OS-, enterprise software-, and cloud-based superpower that all of Microsoft’s most salient plays can be interpreted in anti-Google terms.
Thus Microsoft’s massive financial investment in Bing, its rival to the ubiquitous Google search-engine. Thus its long and now fruitful courtship of Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) as a medium-power ally in their anti-Google axis. And thus Microsoft’s almost pathological fear of Google, which, in 2005, resulted in Ballmer screaming: "****ing Eric Schmidt… I'm going to ****ing bury that guy!”
Apple’s new iTunes/iPhone-fueled strength as a major new media power changes everything. As the enemy of its traditional enemy, Google always seemed a natural ally to Apple. Indeed, they became so strategically close that Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, sat on the Apple board, and the two companies even had an unwritten agreement not to poach each other’s workers.
But all this changed last week when, in a move that took most technology folks by surprise, Eric Schmidt resigned from the Apple board.
In retrospect, however, it’s the surprise that is surprising. This breach goes far beyond Apple’s rejection of the iPhone version of Google Voice. It could represent the beginning of a major new realignment of great technology power relationships.
As Google develops its Android smartphone and mobile operating system, it will inevitably become the most dangerous rival to Apple’s iTunes/iPhone ecosystem. As iTunes increasingly becomes the dominant aggregator of online media, one of its major challenges will come from the Google-owned YouTube Inc. And as Google transforms its Chrome browser into an OS for the real-time Web, it will inevitably collide with Apple’s Safari browser.
So what does happen between Microsoft and Apple as the tomorrow Jobs referred to back in May 2007 becomes today? The truth is that they have much in common. Both are intrinsically opposed to the “freemium” economic model of many new Web companies. Both could also be swept away by the rampaging real-time stream ecosystem of Twitter Inc. and Facebook (Nasdaq: FB).
Most of all, though, both fear Google, the one company that simultaneously challenges Microsoft’s historic dominance of the traditional operating-system market and Apple’s new strength in the emerging mobile-media economy. And if Google’s new Chrome Operating System represents a genuine challenge to both Microsoft Windows and Apple’s platforms, then some sort of informal alliance between these two companies isn’t hard to imagine.
So is it possible that Bill Gates will replace Eric Schmidt on the Apple board? Why not? If those old enemies England and France can fight two great wars together, then Bill and Steve can certainly sit on the same corporate board.
— Andrew Keen, Silicon Valley author, broadcaster, and entrepreneur, can be reached on Twitter at @ajkeen.
I is possible, matter of fact I can see the two having a future together and still competing. The combination is probably to become the strength of 1 in an area(google) of services but maintaining competitive with each other
RE: "Besides, who would Apple get to play "Google" in the commercials for Mac and PC?" ----- How about a SUPERMODEL? Yea, she looks good, she does her job well and makes it look easy (as a model), she's really INTO herself & maybe a bit bored; but, many say she's overpriced!? http://www.google.com/finance?client=news&q=google
I loved this article! Well thought out and written.....
It's amazing over the years to watch how Microsoft and Apple have done the "I hate you but I can't live without you" dance across a wide range of topics. Apple clearly had the creativity that Microsoft lacked, but Microsoft had the business savvy to modify it and make it their own, and get it to a bigger market faster.
Now along comes the 800 lb Google-rilla, and you have to wonder if we won't see more collaboration between Apple and Microsoft, especially if Chrome picks up steam. As I recall, there is already some significant MS dollars invested in Apple Corporate, so there is benefit for both companies to ensure the other's survivial...
Besides, who would Apple get to play "Google" in the commercials for Mac and PC?
It used to be like (and maybe still is) "are you a MAC or PC?", but now (and in a large part, thanks to iPod/iTune and iPhone) more and more people start to use both and utilize their best features - MAC and PC can coexist. In a bigger picture, Apple and Microsoft can and will maintain their competitive relationship while reinventing a future of the tech world together - it's clear Google is becoming a bigger and bigger threat to them both as the Web evolves.
Interesting analogy, Chris. Politics does make strange bedfellows.
I totally agree, I think Google is the next Toyota and does have a better understanding of the changing drivers in the market. I believe he is positioning Google to move into and claim new territory that will bury the current business models, particularly of Microsoft. If he builds the right "system", they won't be able to catch Google.
I don't know if Apple ever really spent much time looking over their shoulders with a "they're coming for us" attitude.
Then along comes the iPhone. It's now much, much more about broadband and the web and web services. And that's where Google plays, and plays well. For Google it's ALWAYS been about the web. Everything else is secondary. Even the Chrome OS, which only exists to drive users to - wait for it - the web.
If your making comparisons why not use the auto industry as a foreshadowing of these tech giants of today?
Let's make MSFT-GM, ...AAPL-Ford....Google- Toyota, and FB- Kia
GM and Ford, sworn corporate enemies until Toyota came along and buried them both. The rising star Kia, is one only car company posting profits and growing.
I think the key thing this article points out is that Google is now becoming a major power in the OS/App marketplace and the smartphone marketpace, displacing the current leaders of Microsoft and Apple, respectively.
But I don't see any strong coalitions arising between Apple and Microsoft in the next 3-5 years. I see more of a re-segmentation of the marketplaces where the strengths of the companies are more focused to their niches:
Microsoft will do corporate/business software and be a base for business applications.
Apple will have a high-end niche for business users (typically small enterprises, but that's a BIG marketplace) for their Mac products and their iPhone/iPod products for smartphones and players. They do have "thought leadership" positions based on their intuitive designs and that has some significant value-add that will persits.
Google will penetrate the corporate market for businesses, typically small markets that Microsoft has held some sway over. They will also be a force to reckon with in the smartphone arena, but they have to play catchup to Apple.
FOSS will make inroads in a variety of ares that can't afford the expense of the other solutions--Google might steal a bit of their cache, but I don't see Free ("as in Beer") software going away.
If anything, I see Microsoft finally realizing that they need to open up their software more and maybe even Apple will sell OS/X to other Intel hardware to further compete against Microsoft.
In short, some shifts in the balance of power, but no partnerships like the article suggests.
Sorry, I have no interest in free software to do stuff for me. I've spent the fortune years ago to buy everything I need, so I'm coasting along on upgrade pricing. If we are always talking about cybersecurity, what makes one think that going online to use the Google Office will be any more secure than just using your own, non connected to the internet, computer with the bloated MS Office?? Something spectacular would have to happen to make me change my mind, like the almost total worldwide switch from Film to Digital in just 5 short years.
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Dead since 1832, Jeremy Bentham is a cadaver that has been living in public ever since, on display beside "Dapple," his favorite walking stick, in a glass-fronted wooden coffin at London’s University College. His coffin was coined as an “Auto-Icon” by Bentham, which is a neologism meaning "a man who is his own image." Below is an excerpt from Andrew Keen’s new book, Digital Vertigo: How Today's Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us, in which he describes recognizing the Auto-Icon as a symbol for the digital age.
The following is excerpted from Andrew Keen's latest book, Digital Vertigo: How Today's Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us (New York: St. Martin's Press: 2012), which will be released this week.
I had come to London that morning from Oxford, where I’d spent the previous few days at a conference entitled “Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford.” This was an event organized by the university’s Said Business School in which Silicon Valley’s most influential entrepreneurs had come to the closed, haunted city of Oxford to celebrate the openness and transparency of social life in the twenty-first century.
My old sparring partner Jimmy Wales has been busy predicting the future again. This time, in a speech last month at the Global INET conference in Geneva, Switzerland, he said that Hollywood is doomed. But rather than skewered on the sword of piracy, Wales forecasts, it will be killed by its own irrelevance.
“The future is already here -- it’s just not very evenly distributed,” William Gibson so presciently said in 1993. And late last week, that future, our open 21st-century future, was on show in a windowless late 20th-century building in downtown New York City, at an event hosted by AT&T.
Welcome to the zettabyte era, an age of increasingly wireless connectivity in which the gigabyte equivalent of every motion picture ever produced will travel across the Internet every five minutes. According to a Cisco white paper, global IP traffic, having increased eightfold over the last five years, will ascend to this zettabyte (one billion terabytes) peak by 2015. And by then, there will be more than 8 million households in the terabyte club and, even more astonishingly, another 20 million households producing half a terabyte (one thousand gigabytes) each month.
The Amazon smartphone rumor and the Apple mini-iPad rumor show that the mobile device giants think they have to be in all the device spaces to win. Why? Because the cloud can create an ecosystem where every device can cooperate to support the user, and if you don't supply all the devices you miss out on the total value.
Nicole and Kim have heard the news that Google's new mobile OS, "Jelly Bean," has a voice assistant that's poised to defeat their precious Siri. It's time for another test!
Verizon's one-data-plan-for-all-devices could revolutionize mobile data by making it practical to have multiple devices share a plan, and thus encourage users to cellular-equip all their portable appliances.
To date, smartphone apps have only been able to work with 50Meg chunks of information. Well, recent technical advances have been able to boost that number to 4Gbytes. Consequently, developers will be able to work with more complex data types. But will wireless networks be able to handle the additional traffic?
Google is reportedly working on a pair of Android glasses that will use a low-resolution built-in camera to monitor the world in real time and overlay information about locations, surrounding buildings, and friends who might be nearby. Interested?
Google may give Microsoft an opening for its phone and tablet if it can't induce all the Android handset and tablet vendors to update their OSes to Version 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Forcing users to choose between buying a new device and having an obsolete OS is a bad idea.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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