Recently, I wrote about how Google and Facebook have reacted to recent threats[1] such as the Australian government requiring negotiations with media companies and Apple requiring app makers to have consumers opt in to tracking.
The paths of the digital advertising giants may just be beginning to diverge. While Google will remain dependent on advertising revenue for years to come, the company's levelheaded approach regarding threats to that business may be indicative of a broader shift that could have the future of the company looking a lot more like Microsoft than Facebook.
As we were recently reminded when Microsoft executive Brad Smith testified regarding Google's dominance[2], the two companies have a long-running rivalry. It has included Microsoft chasing Google in online search and mobile phone operating systems and Google chasing Microsoft in cloud computing, productivity suites, and PC operating systems. The startup display of the Surface Duo[3], which shows the Microsoft logo on one screen and the Android logo on the other, is a great metaphor for the companies' relationship -- separated by a divide designed to bend but not break.
The Surface Duo also reminds us that, overall, Google has made more progress muscling in on Microsoft's turf than vice versa and has been willing to abandon purism to do so. Google's original beachhead was the lightweight web-based office suite Google Docs, which has now grown into Google Workspace. Even today, Google's productivity apps can't do many things that Microsoft Office can do. But Google has slowly if sometimes awkwardly been moving to counter the broader Microsoft productivity story piece by piece.
Google Keep, a second-class member of Google's work suite, is simplistic compared to Evernote, which is itself simplistic compared to Microsoft's OneNote. While notorious for its many