I give credit to MSFT for ... finally, after 2 decades... trying to innovate. I don't think they will be successful with these products, but possibly they can iterate on them until they are successful.
This is a lot more than google has done, and you're right, people should make the comparison to 1990s Microsoft which used FUD to kill innovation in the industry.
Fortunately, Balmer seems to have killed that ability in 2007 when he said there was no chance the iPhone would be successful.
Maybe MSFT has turned a corner. And unlike google and everyone else, they actually have a license from Apple to use multi-touch, etc, so they're actually legitimate competitors.
Mercedes Benz demoed the technology nearly 20 years ago and will be shipping cars along with Audi, Volvo etc en masse over the coming years. In fact every single notable car manufacturer has had their own program in place for decades.
Secondly, nobody knows who is leading the industry. But we know it's not Google since all of the car manufacturers have their own programs in fairly advanced stages. And due to the consolidated nature of the industry key technologies are shared within the groups. So if Google has no one interested in their technologies and they don't make cars then how will they ever lead anything ?
People seem to think it's a competitor to the iPhone, but it's an ACCESSORY that needs and iPhone to connect to the network.
Worse, it has no technology (other than miniturization) that hasn't been done many times before-- I first saw a "glass" type system in the 1980s.... and that one actually had a computer on board!
I personally don't think it's a competitor to the iPhone, and I haven't seen this opinion around as well, so maybe it's an opinion shared just by Apple evangelists?
I've seen mp3 players, laptops, software stores and smartphones way before Apple did them, so should we blame Apple for being a copycat? Let's wait and see if it reveals itself as useful or not.