A CIO Magazine tem um interessante 'artigo-especulação' sobre a entrada do Google no mundo da computação corporativa. Vou surrupiar alguns trechos:

"Google isn't designed organizationally or philosophically to compete with Microsoft; it's designed to bypass it. Since its applications live on the Web, they aren't dependent on an operating system the same way desktop applications are."

"Google's strength lies not in the applications it shows the world but in the architecture it doesn't, the company's business strategy is not readily apparent.
... People who look at Google and see nothing more than random growth are making a big mistake. Most of the high-tech industry is just starting to realize this."

"Google's platform, along with the others bound to follow in its wake, will, over time, move computing to the Web and away from the desktop. As this happens, IT will get better—applications will be easier, faster and cheaper to use—much as it did when it moved off the mainframe 20 years ago. 'We're still far away from a holistic Web computing solution,' says Brian Shield, CIO of The Weather Channel. 'But the pieces are not that far away. We're not far from fostering greater productivity with Google's name on it.'"

"But even if Microsoft prevails—or if Google simply implodes on its own, done in by growth, internal squabbling or hubris—the model [web based] will survive and thrive. Applications are destined to move to the Web. Perhaps not all at once, and maybe not even quickly (after all, companies are still running Cobol applications on mainframes), but Google has demonstrated that the Web computing model is viable.

And that's going to change everything for CIOs."

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Fica uma dúvida: quem está correndo atrás de quem? O Google corre realmente em direção das empresas (como desesperadamente deseja Mr Nick 'drop out' Carr), OU é a MS (que, tropeçando, como mostra este artigo do John Battelle) que segue os passos do Google?

Não se trata de um 'OU'? As duas corridas ocorrem simultaneamente? Se sim, quem tem mais fôlego?