Just that good eh?

"If Google has a near-monopoly, it's because they're just that good. Microsoft has a monopoly because it's hard NOT to use their products."

Erm, and why, exactly, is it "hard NOT to use [Microsoft] products"? Is it because, when they were embryonic in the market place, they were "just that good"? Can you think of a word processor in 1988 that was better than Word for DOS? Or even Word 6 & Excel 5 on Windows 3.1? Sure, you had to put up with Windows, but what was better? Even the Mac versions were up to speed. Microsoft didn't get to the top of the pile by being anticompetitive, that only happened after they got to the top of the pile.

What we're looking at here is a gorilla colony. There's a new kid around who's gunning for alpha-male status, and so is doing anything to make himself look the best. When he gets alpha-male status, THAT's when the rot will set in. Whilst Ashlee's article was far from the best journalism I've read in the last ten minutes, it does help cause people to question whether Google is the saintly one they would have us believe.

What's happening here is that history is about to do its famous repeating trick, and we as "general public" need to be on our toes to make sure we don't get screwed in the same way we were by Microsoft.