A guerra (eletronica), por outros meios....
Techdom’s Two Cold Wars
HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.
The Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2009
Image M.E. Cohen
Why didn’t the U.S. and the USSR just ignore each other and save themselves the cost of an arms race? Answer: Each had the potential to do such serious damage to the other, they dared not risk it.
Microsoft and Google also have the power to damage each other, and are better off if they don’t. They too spend a lot of money on deterrence—a puzzle since both are inevitably owned by many of the same shareholders, including large mutual and pension funds. Even more than the Cold War superpowers, they have every incentive quietly to agree to be deterred without investing quite so much on an arms race.
These are thoughts designed to trouble the naïve delight of many who heard Google’s announcement last week that it intends to roll out an operating system to compete with Windows. Partisan Google fans imagine Google finally is preparing to go toe-to-toe with its nemesis. They couldn’t be more wrong.
Google might do so if Microsoft were unilaterally to disarm in some way. That’s not going to happen. Microsoft merely is being reminded that its fat Windows margins are vulnerable to attack.
Microsoft sent the parallel message to Google when it spent millions to launch Bing, a new search engine that’s receiving good reviews even from Microsoft haters. Bing, Microsoft hopes, will finally prove a weapon that can seriously threaten Google’s margins, though only to keep Google from raiding Microsoft’s.
Or take Microsoft’s newly announced move (foreshadowed here last year) to launch a free, ad-supported version of Office. Steve Ballmer and company are showing they aren’t lying down in the face of Google Apps, also offered free. Be assured, however, that Microsoft has no intention of seriously cannibalizing its own Office cash flows just to stop Google from doing the same.
Their little secret is that neither Google nor Microsoft really have an interest in challenging each other’s core franchises if it means risk to their own. Their posturing is primarily defensive—fear of loss is greater than hope of gain.
And both companies by now have a well-earned reputation for being willing to invest large sums simply to threaten the profits of companies that potentially threaten theirs. Microsoft gave the world MSN, Internet Explorer, Xbox, Zune and now Bing—aimed at AOL, Netscape, Sony, Google or whatever new player might threaten to bypass Microsoft’s dominance on the desktop.
For its part, Google has forked over billions for YouTube, Gmail, its phone software, Google Apps—meant to pre-empt strategic turf that someone else might conceivably use to claim a large share of Web advertising.
That doesn’t mean their skirmishes aren’t meant to draw blood, which is what makes them credible. Their threats and gestures probably do take a modest toll on each other’s profits. Google undoubtedly is more susceptible to pushback from advertisers who can say, semi-believably, that they might shift some of their business to Bing. Microsoft might bend a little more for corporate clients on the price of Windows or Office if a customer can point to, say, a Google alternative he might patronize.
Naturally, the fondest wish of both companies’ shareholders is that they find a cheaper way to deter each other, or better yet strike a cease-fire. In short, they wish Google and Microsoft would reach the kind of condominium that Google and Apple have reached.
For, whatever the advertised purpose of Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s presence on Apple’s board, the obvious purpose is to manage competition between the two companies. Of all the dabbling Google has done, notice that it hasn’t dabbled in music-playing software, in cataloging music files (though Google says its mission is to “organize all the world’s information”), or even in allowing users to create playlists of YouTube music videos. Google’s dabbling has been restricted to markets where Microsoft, Nokia or others are dominant, not where Apple is dominant.
How long the Apple-Google cold peace can last is, in some ways, a more interesting subject than the latest dustup between Google and Microsoft. The Justice Department’s antitrust division already is known to be looking into Mr. Schmidt’s role on the Apple board as a potential violation. Yet Mr. Schmidt remained on the Apple’s board even as Google launched Android, its mobile phone operating system that competes with Apple’s iPhone. He remains on the Apple board even as Google now prepares to launch a computer operating system, which means competing not just with Microsoft but with Apple.
One thing that keeps Apple and Google maneuvering so cautiously with respect to each other is that both currently benefit from an aura of “coolness” that would be jeopardized if they found themselves clashing in public. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Even if antitrust weren’t in the way, Microsoft and Google would find it harder to engage in a similar frigid entente simply because Microsoft’s “uncoolness” requires Google partly to define itself as anti-Microsoft. But don’t doubt the two would opt for a competitive cease-fire if they could figure out how.
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