Opinion: Sure, Google Video is interesting, but the real story is in Google Pack, which will further wrest users away from Microsoft's products.There's been a lot of prognostication and breathless augeries surrounding everybody's favorite Rorschach test lately. They're building servers inside giant cubes. They're building desktops with Wyse. They're merging to form Devastator.
OK, the last one is mine, but feel free to spread the meme. You can tag it on del.icio.us with "why_not?"
But seriously, the latest news about Google, reported yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, is that Google will debut an expanded Google Video Search program that allows you to purchase videos, and they'll announce a software bundle called Google Pack.
The video is interesting, sure. But the more interesting news to me is Google Pack.
Everybody has been base-jumping onto Internet video since Apple announced video downloads on iTunes last October.
And if Google really is selling videos by partnering with major providers like the NBA—which, hello synergy, is developing a huge digital archive of their footage—that will up the ante against Yahoo.
Yahoo is becoming an online video content provider with original programming like Kevin Sites' Hot Zone and the newly announced Wow House. Google is taking a different road by partnering to organize and deliver content.
Partnering is the key word here, because that's a big component of what Google, and Google Pack, is about.
Google is not a content producer. It's a content organizer. Its job is to attach itself, lichen-like, onto every source of information in the digital world. It's a wrapper.
For every product that's released, Google has a way, or is developing a way, to help you better organize the information that comes out of and through that product. It's the ultimate meta service.
For that reason, Google doesn't need to build a computer. It doesn't need to build an operating system.
But what it does need to do is control your desktop. Because the desktop is still where you do most of your content generation.
In that context, Google Pack can be seen as a preemptive strike against Windows Vista and IE7. Use any OS you want, says Google, but let us manage your information.
If we take a look at the applications that will supposedly be in Google Pack, we see that every single one competes with one of Microsoft's products.
Firefox competes with IE, Norton anti-virus competes with OneCare, Ad-Aware competes with Defender, Picasa competes with Photo Gallery in Vista, Google Earth competes with Live Local, Google desktop competes with Windows, Google toolbar competes with the IE toolbar, Adobe Reader competes with Microsoft's Metro format.
The last two Google Pack apps, Trillian and RealPlayer, are interesting choices.
Why bundle in Trillian and Google Talk? Because Trillian is a federated application (just like Google, in a way). And, you can use your Google Talk account, which uses Jabber, with Trillian.
Why bundle in RealPlayer? Obviously, RealPlayer competes with Windows Media Player. (And, speaking of which, Google is rumored to be launching a desktop media player that complements their new expanded search service.)
And RealNetworks is no friend to Microsoft. It won a lawsuit against the Redmond-based company last year, and now a link to its online service Rhapsody is included in Windows Media Player.
Some people have pointed out that Google Pack doesn't include a word processor or other software that competes directly with Microsoft's core business.
Of course not. Google doesn't need to get into that space. Why build word processing software when you can simply index the content of its documents and sell ads around searching it?
Given all this, I don't know why Gates is so concerned with IBM.
By the time Vista arrives, your process tray will be chockablock with Google or Google's partner's applications.
Who knows what partnerships lie ahead for Google. Its federated embedding plan is so good, I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see Google apps being shipped on PCs.
That would be quite an end-run around Microsoft's old embedded browser strategy, wouldn't it?
What must be consternating to Microsoft and any other competitor is that Google can and will make money off its content and software. They're becoming a superstructure around content.
I guess you could say that Google is Java, and everybody else is XML.
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