Not if, but when, will Google be bigger than Microsoft?

Google has grown 400% over the last 3ish years, while Microsoft has basically flatlined.

If the current trend continues, then Google will be bigger than Microsoft before the end of 2008. In many ways that doesn’t seem unrealistic - Microsoft may be more like IBM and Google more like the fictitious Tyrell corp.

Some other interesting things have happened in the tech rebound. Apple, which is less than half the size of Google, is now worth more than the entire gaggle of Internet behemoths other than Google (Amazon, Ebay and Yahoo), put together.

And some things haven’t changed. Oracle is also worth about the same as Amazon, Ebay and Yahoo.

Since Web2.0 largely runs on open source DBMS unlike the original Oracle powered dotcoms, this might come as some surprise. But one can never underestimate the value of enterprise and small business software. Its what is keeping Microsoft in suspended animation, and what has accounted for the largest acquisitions this time round, in ‘Sillycon’ Valley.

In other words, web2.0 is Google and they buy cheap or enterprise or develop in-house. Maybe that’s why web2.0 investors and entrepreneurs alike are such Facebook evangelists. A Facebook IPO may be the last vestige for their hopes and dreams.

GOOG: 543.34 0.00 (0.00%) - Google Inc.

Count Gottfried von Bismarck…was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies.

Ouch.

Count Gottfried von Bismarck | Obituaries | News | Telegraph

I eventually got my iPhone activated, yet 2 days later the number hasn’t processed, and ATT won’t accept anything other than a ‘fax’ (yup no sms or email can be sent to a sodding phone company), to get my international plan up and running because I have had less than 3 addresses in the US. Then I had to get a replacement iPhone because the speaker was broken. As Dave Winer would say - Oy!

– And you know what? Despite the fact that ATT continue to behave like the kind of company that has a 200 yard wide dinosaur-extinction-type asteroid thingy headed for it. Its actually worth it, The iPhone is the kind of superior intelligence that can only emerge as the dinosaur’s fade. A truly innovative and disruptive piece of technology. The kind of product that will aid the fall of companies like ATT as iTunes did to the music companies with a tight butted little tango of bait and switch.

As an example, the fact that iChat is missing from the iPhone cannot possibly be an oversight. I suspect its temporary absence is due to Apple wanting chat to be treated as a standard data service like on the Sidekick, and ATT wanting it to be treated as an SMS message (or more accurately and scandalously for each individual sentence of an IM message to be treated as a separate SMS message) like on the Blackberry. Clearly the latter case is both stupid and greedy, and pushing to hard against natural changes in an industry is not a good idea, if the music industry is any precedent to learn from.

If this is the real reason for no iChat on iPhone, (and I’d love someone to confirm this), then telcos fighting for 10c a sentence IM will only increase the provocation of the computer co’s and make a battle for 0c mobile Internet calls, more likely and worth fighting for.

Jesus Phone Crucified by ATT

And it came to pass that on the morning of the Sabbath, there were no lines at the Apple Store in Soho. For lo, there were hordes of people on the previous eve. It was decided that the Lord had shined down on me and I wouldn’t have to wait in line like those who had not been chosen.

Three score and ten seconds later I had the one they call ‘Jesus Phone’. And indeed it was truly a wondrous thing from the one they call Steve. I tapped the button and there was light - and a little slidey thing and emergency call hotline-to-God thing. But not much else before activation with the people of ATT.

But the activation by the people called ATT did not work, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth and hours of moronic playing with the single slidey thing.

And it came to pass that on the morning after the Sabbath the people of ATT did have conflicting messages for they knew not what they were doing. Some did prophesize that my Jesus phone number was being ported and some did prophesize that my number was not portable. And so the Baptism of Jesus Phone was caught in an endless loop. ATT did have a direct number and it was the number of the beast - with 2 hour hold times.

One of the people of the telephone book, ATT, did prophesize that “if I had walked into an ATT store and bought any other phone than an iPhone, that I wouldn’t have had any problems.”

And this made the one they call Steve very upset and there was more wailing and gnashing of teeth, for the one they call Steve was good and he had done an exclusive deal with the people of ATT, who were not good and couldn’t customer service their way out of a paper bag.

After 40 hours and 40 minutes on the phone with the people of the telephone book and consulting all the other plagues set upon people like Steve Rubel it was decided that I would go to the park with my wife and return Jesus Phone from whence he came, and sell my Apple stock. For. lo, the son doth shine and I’m not wasting my effing Sunday on the - PHONE.

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