Comment by sseth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sseth | Hacker News Reader

Let's ask a question : How did Google defeat another giant - Microsoft - in 2 major markets where Microsoft had a head start and deep pockets? How did Chrome beat IE, and how did Android beat the several generations of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone?

Clearly Microsoft had no dearth of talent or money. So how come it could not keep Google at bay? In my view the answer lies in the fact that Google's engineering led culture meant they could follow a release cadence that is unheard of for such large systems. Chrome was releasing every 6 weeks, and Android every 3-6 months or so in the early days. Meanwhile we had 1.5 - 2 years between each Windows Phone release.

When Chrome started, IE had nearly 70% market share and the benefit of being deployed on nearly every computer on earth. Microsoft was in the mobile phone market from 2000. In 2011, IDC predicted Windows Phone would overtake the iPhone. Both Google and Microsoft were taken aback by the iPhone, but Google was able to turn on a dime, Microsoft was not. Google achievement has been to stay agile even as it grew big - in my view this remains the secret to their success.

I think this is somewhat related to how Google lost to Facebook in the social space. Google already had Orkut with them. Similarly the idea of Google drive was floated around in Google as early as 2008. But it took the Advent of Dropbox for Google to realise what they had missed.

Same goes for the public cloud. Although Google had the app engine, they did not aggressively invest in it. Azure clearly over took Google in cloud space.

I am sure there would be many such examples from all the Tech Giants.

Google did a great job of putting the user first. You never felt like you were being sold something, a refreshing change from the MSN 'homepage' at the time.

You also did not feel that you were being given something for free that had a catch to it - see HN story today about prisons getting 'free' tablets.

Make no mistake, Microsoft can do free very nicely too - Internet Explorer in the Netscape days was partly ascendant for doing 'free' very well at a time when Netscape was emerging from 'shareware'. But with Microsoft 'free' you always felt that you were a pawn in their plans for global domination, to blot out the rivals.

I think that Google came along with a great series of products and services that put the user first with an ethos that Microsoft, Apple and others just did not 'get'. Although Chrome was marketed with billboards and a link in the search results, the real work on adoption was done by the users recommending the superior, user centric product to their workmates, friends and family.

This is a great point.

And i think Microsoft could have done this too. But perhaps the conflict between improving the open web vs pushing their own operating system was a conflict they never resolved internally, giving Google the time and space it needed to outflank them. And Google moved fast enough, and as you have said, created a great enough user experience, that it could quickly establish a strong foothold.

I think if Microsoft had truly been focused on keeping IE as the best browser in the world, it would have been difficult to displace given its dominance.

Microsoft's problem for Windows was that they wanted to make money of selling Windows for mobile phones instead of giving it away for free.

Chrome's success could be due to Google having an ad for Chrome at the top of the most visited site of the internet.

No doubt Chrome had an advantage over Firefox in this case. But that does not explain how they beat IE. Microsoft had the advantage of shipping IE with the OS itself.

I don't believe the licensing cost of Windows Phone was what led to its downfall. The Nokia deal probably cost Microsoft more than any licensing fee it would have collected. Microsoft had the money and the presence in the market to out compete Google. It just did not have the right product at the right time.

These items have nothing to do with engineering ability and everything to do with inept leadership at Microsoft.

Google had better leadership and easier choices. They had no prexisting customers or partners to annoy.

Companies get wacky like this on top. Think about a certain computer company shippping defective laptops for years to avoid disruption of the product schedule. :)

Good points. I still find Google pretty agile and aggressive.

It is also good to ask why Google could not succeed at social media. Perhaps network effects and an equally agile competitor were a big enough moat for Facebook to fight off Google successfully.

To say that abuse of monopoly is what has enabled Google to grow big is too simplistic. They have succeeded brilliantly in areas where they had equally big competitors, and failed spectacularly as well in others - social media being the most prominent. But more tech focused readers will recall Wave, or NaCl. Then are cases where we have a stalemate for example G Suite, where Microsoft still holds it own with Office.

Google Cloud is a strange case where one can argue that Google has failed to leverage many of its own innovations in containers and other data center infrastructure to achieve a dominant position. I would argue this is a case where Google should have been a market leader and much like Microsoft in the 2000's has frittered away a natural advantage.

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