The next monopoly called Google!

Google has the Midas touch. Everything it touches turns to gold. The latest is the beta version of Blogger, the blog company it acquired in 2003. Though it has taken 3 years in coming, the beta version rocks!

Apart from the fresh look from staid old templates, its much easier to insert third party code like hit counters from bravenet. The new design is modular. You can fit modules called page elements and drag and drop them to design your own layout.

There are many other features like cutomising your colours, labels and archiving options which were not possible with the previous version. But this post is not about my blog. If you look carefully Google has been doing a lot of integrating in recent times. Will they one day pose a challenge to Microsoft?

With Google docs , mail, social networking and beta blogger it looks to be the next Office Suite. I guess the next development will be a presentation software, database software aka Powerpoint and Access. Just look at the brilliance of it all, Google has eliminated piracy (anyone can access it with a google account), cut down development cost (code changed at Google's labs results in new software worldwide) and has reduced time to market to zilch. It also bought youtube recently

Even entertainment will be online. Just imagine on demand music from youtube. No artist will sell CDs. Instead google will buy the exclusive rights and then you can hear it streaming from the net. No more music piracy! There will be ads running alongside (If you were wondering about the business model!). Also as I have posted earlier this year, it will also give them valuable customer information. Will this mean an online Office in a few years? The last nail in the Microsoft coffin will be a Google OS.

Of course, we are assuming that the internet will be omnipresent. It will take some time (a decade or two maybe) when most of the developed and developing world will be wired to the net. By then Google will pretty much where Microsoft is today, possibly way above it. Unless Microsoft does something spectacular I can see Google serruptitously eating away at Microsoft's market. For a company which began with core competency in Search it has come a long way!