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April 29th, 2008

Micro-bambi meets Googol-zilla

Posted by Phil Wainewright @ 4:38 am

Categories: Google, Microsoft

Tags: Google Inc., Zero, Microsoft Corp., Phil Wainewright

My post early yesterday, Gillmor: Why Google should worry about Live Mesh, attracted a late flurry of Talkback comments last night. Probably the best I’ve read in a long while was this incisive analysis by Talkback poster utugau on why Google doesn’t have to worry about any threat from Microsoft:

What is a Microsoft? it that ’soft’ a new unit and microsoft is 1/1,000,000 of a soft?

Google comes from the term googool that is 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Why a company with 100 zeros to the right of the decimal point should be worried with a company with 6 zeros to the left of the decimal point?

It’s an interesting angle on the debate and one that certainly hadn’t struck me before (my emphasis added). It made me think of the celebrated 1969 cartoon, Bambi meets Godzilla, with Microsoft in the role of Bambi and Google as the giant Godzilla (click image below for a YouTube screening).

Screengrab of Bambi meets Godzilla

Phil WainewrightPhil Wainewright is a commentator and strategist on emerging software industry trends. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.


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  • Talkback
  • Most Recent of 12 Talkback(s)
Some code...
I will agree that Google kinda hit the right technology at the right time and by mostly blind luck got the publics attention like they did but to compare their coding algorithms by length isn't making... (Read the rest)
Posted by: techie.brandon Posted on: 05/07/08 You are currently: a Guest | | Terms of Use
Well, search does not have any lock-in, you can switch search providers in  DonnieBoy | 04/29/08
If push comes to shove ...  P. Douglas | 04/29/08
Have you been so damaged by MS  GuidingLight | 04/29/08
Well GL...  jacarter3 | 04/29/08
but you left  mdemuth | 04/29/08
Let me correct your misapprehension...  jacarter3 | 04/29/08
You give a good example of Firefox. There is a whole lot less lock-in for a  DonnieBoy | 04/29/08
No, before Firefox  mdemuth | 04/29/08
RE: Micro-bambi meets Googol-zilla  X41 | 04/29/08
Google is nothing  jk_10 | 05/01/08
Some code...  techie.brandon | 05/07/08
RE: Micro-bambi meets Googol-zilla  tutankammmoun | 05/04/08

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