Here are some historic company rivalries for you: Coke vs. Pepsi, McDonalds vs. Burger King, All State vs. State Farm, Exxon Mobile vs. BP. Can we add Google vs. Microsoft to this list?
This isn’t the first time Google and Microsoft have butted heads, and it probably won’t be the last. One time, Google sued the US gov’t for not recognizing it’s bid for a cloud email system. Google probably wouldn’t have sued if a contract hadn’t had gone to Microsoft first. Now they found something else to fight about. Google is now asking…no…make that demanding Microsoft take You Tube off their Windows phone app list.
This time the root is advertising. Google claims the You Tube app’s lack of ads is in violation of the You Tube API. They also claim Microsoft created the app without Google’s consent or knowledge, and did so to deliberately cut into their profits. The lack of ads also hurts the advertisers. This is going to cut off a great source, thus increase competition and prices elsewhere, causing harm to the system itself. Google CEO Larry Page hardly?held back about his feelings for Microsoft : “…we struggle with people like Microsoft.”
Will this rivalry ever end? I doubt it. There’s been some collaboration, like Google’s talk support and Microsoft’s webmail service coming together.?Hey, sometimes we have to work with people we don’t?like. But I have a?feeling this dispute is?going to trump this attempt. So I close by asking, can they both get along?