Google Launches A Major Offensive Against Microsoft With “Going Google”
Microsoft and Google have seen their rivalry kicked up a notch in recent weeks. First, Google announced Chrome OS, the company's first operating system. Then Microsoft announced the new version of Office with major cloud app support.
Context & Ripple Effects
The 'Going Google' campaign is the marketing capstone to a three-year escalation. Google first disclosed plans for a web-based office suite in August 2006, and Microsoft answered with a legal offensive — an attack on Google over copyright in March 2007 — before Google shipped its browser, put through its first public test in September 2008.
With Chrome OS announced as Google's first operating system and Microsoft countering by adding major cloud support to the new Office, both companies are now attacking each other on their home turf simultaneously: Google at desktop software, Microsoft at the web.
First-order effects
- Microsoft's dominant Office franchise faces its first mass-market ad campaign explicitly urging customers to switch, aimed squarely at enterprise buyers evaluating whether cloud apps can replace installed software.
- Google's move forces the new cloud-enabled Office into a head-to-head comparison with Google Apps rather than competing only against legacy office suites.
Second-order effects
- IT procurement shifts from a default purchase to an active evaluation between two vendors, pressuring pricing and bundling on both sides of the productivity-software market.
- The browser and OS layers become strategic distribution channels: Chrome and Chrome OS funnel users toward Google Apps, while Microsoft's cloud Office push ties its own client software to its services.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, productivity software becomes a platform war fought across OS, browser, and applications — with each company using one layer to subsidize another — and advertising itself becomes a recognized weapon in enterprise software competition.
- Sustained rivalry at this intensity points toward regulators and enterprises eventually treating the Google-Microsoft duopoly in cloud productivity as a structural feature of the market, not a passing skirmish.
The trend: Enterprise software competition is moving from product features to full-stack platform confrontation, where operating systems, browsers, and ad campaigns are all instruments against the same rival.