Google is the new Microsoft

It actually hurt to type that. Not b/c of a like or dislike of either company, but because the whole X is the new Y thing is trite to the point of being excruciating.  Like the title of this post, the whole Microsoft /Google juxtaposition is pretty tired to say the least.  But Holman Jenkins' The Microsofting of Google is a pretty good read, if for no other reason than the blunt manner in which he wrote it. Two examples really make the point...

Microsoft continues to pour billions into Windows, adding features most users don't know exist, while spending millions of man-hours to remain "backward compatible" with thousands of aging programs and devices used by ever shrinking numbers of customers.

Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion and claims one day it will make money from advertising, but for now it bears the rapidly increasing cost of storing and serving billions of videos most of which are watched by nobody. Google has courted similar unrequited expenses to bring users free business software, email, WiFi, a forthcoming telephone, a bruited national wireless network, all in theory to be supported by ad revenues.